U.S. airlines will vie with BA, the dominant carrier at Heathrow, that currently has flights to 24 U.S. cities.

CNN: Open Skies explained

NTT's network altogether, SpeedNet will avoid having to pay the dominant carrier's interconnection charges, which independent telephone companies reckon amount to a third of their total operating costs.

ECONOMIST: Japanese Telecoms

Unicom has struggled, signing up only 30 million CDMA customers--well below its capacity of 70 million--a subscriber base only a sixth the size of that of China Mobile, the dominant GSM carrier.

FORBES