AbstractThe broadband ISDN (BISDN) or integrated broadband communication (IBC) customer access connection (CAC) must meet a wide variety of technical and economic requirements in order to be competitive with dedicated network accesses and cope with the evolution of future services. Many proposals for broadband implementations are based on various service scenarios. Such scenarios may very well be applicable to certain user categories or at certain points in time. The CAC to be defined, however, has not to be based ononesuch scenario–but has to be able efficiently to support all the varying and evolving customer needs during a long period of time. In this paper the requirements are analysed and a CAC system concept fulfilling the basic requirements is put forward bearing in mind the interaction with relevant basic technology. A step‐by‐step evolution scenario for the BISDN/IBC network with emphasis on the CAC system introduction is outlined and finally some standardization issues are highli