USM 2000 is the third event in a series of international IFIP/GI conferences on Trends in Distributed Systems. Following the venues in Aachen, Germany (1996) and Hamburg, Germany (1998), this event in Munich considers the trend towards a Universal Service Market - USM 2000. The trend towards a universal service market has many origins, e.g., the integration of telecom and data communications, the deregulation e?orts with respect to telco markets, the globalization of information, the virtualization of companies, the requirement of a short time-to-market, the advances in network technologies,...