We present an approach to resource allocation in telecommunications networks based on the interaction of self-interested agents which have limited information about their environment. A system architecture is described which allows agents representing various network resources, potentially owned by different real-world enterprises, to coordinate their resource allocation decisions without assuming a priori cooperation. It is argued that such an architecture has the potential to provide a distributed, robust and efficient means of traffic management for telecommunications networks. Some preliminary work on the design of the trading behaviour of the agents in the economy is presented, including the results of experiments which investigate the relative performance of market-based agents compared with traffic management based on static routing.