[51] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: competition [answer to the question]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Martin Lee Schoffstall)
Tue Oct 30 14:43:39 1990
To: kwe@buitb.bu.edu (Kent England)
Cc: schoff@psi.com, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 30 Oct 90 09:42:03 -0500.
Date: Tue, 30 Oct 90 14:20:41 -0500
From: "Martin Lee Schoffstall" <schoff@psi.com>
Kent,
I just wanted you to establish the facts, otherwise I would
be inaccurate, you've given your normal honest answer. I'll summarize
in the most contractural manner, you have 20 contracts with
academics and 36 contracts with commercial people to provide
a service.
>From the "Commercialization of the Internet" presentation at Interop90
you asked the panel "when would the commercial networks interconnect"
and the response from Rick and I was "when our customers ask for
it, which they haven't".
Then I in my normal agressive manner said that the real problem
was the commercial organizations participating in the R&E networks
such as NEARNet which imposed restrictions as to use. Those
are the people that some % of the 150 networks on PSINet want
to get to right now and do commercial work with.
So for a network so clearly dominated by commercial organizations,
why don't you remove your restrictions or go commercial so
that your customers and mine can be happy.
Marty
---------------
Of course I can answer the second question. Here are your
answer(s):
Twenty of NEARnet's current membership of 56 are academic
institutions or collections of academic institutions from
Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Rhode Island. Get
your calculator and that will come out to 36%. If you want a
different but equally valid view, take the University of Maine system
and add in all of their institutions separately (7) and take the Mass
Board of Regents and add in every Mass public academic institution
separately (31) [but don't count UMass twice, since they are a direct
member of NEARnet]. Your percentage now is 60. But then we can add
a certain consortia of very small entrepreneurial institutions (10
members) and change the percentage again the other way.
Of the remaining nonacademic institutions or collections of
institutions, some are government labs (eg, Mitre), one is affiliated
with MIT (Lincoln Labs), several are other not-for-profits, some are
medical institutions, and the rest are research labs of large and
small commercial enterprises.
Marty, there are your answers. Which percentage suits your
purpose best? You are welcome to it.
Now can we talk about something relevant or interesting?
--Kent
