[132904] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Level 3 Communications Issues Statement Concerning
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steve Gibbard)
Thu Dec 2 16:28:10 2010
From: Steve Gibbard <scg@gibbard.org>
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTi=yYncpsVaqLjbtjj1RcY7bQ88ie5XcG3zerZBq@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2010 13:28:00 -0800
To: William Herrin <bill@herrin.us>
Cc: NANOG list <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Dec 1, 2010, at 5:47 PM, William Herrin wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 3:38 PM, Derek J. Balling <dredd@megacity.org> =
wrote:
>> On Nov 29, 2010, at 10:25 PM, William Herrin wrote:
>>> There are a couple forms of shared billing.
>>=20
>> There's a third kind you failed to mention that doesn't require equal =
footing of the parties. The broker.
>>=20
>> I might pay an apartment broker $X to help find me an apartment.
>> In turn the apartment broker might match me up with an apartment,
>> and charge the landlord $Y for a successful tenancy.
>=20
> Hi Derek,
>=20
> For the most part the apartment broker process doesn't work quite the
> way you think. Generally he either gets a fee from you to find you the
Regardless of whether the apartment broker comparison holds up, there =
are many examples of what economists call two-sided markets:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-sided_market
They don't all have the same fee-splitting systems, and you can find an =
example to site as precedent for just about any system you could =
reasonably advocate. An example raised in a talk I heard a few years =
ago was of scholarly journals that collect money from both their =
subscribers and their authors. The authors need to be published in =
order to get tenure, and the readers pay because they want to know what =
the authors are saying. Another example is the Golden Gate Bridge, =
which was funded in the 1930s by the rural counties north of the bridge =
(including one ~300 miles north), who wanted connectivity to San =
Francisco.
It's probably reasonable to generalize a bit and say that in the systems =
not imposed by regulators, the distribution of costs has something to do =
with how much each party cares, within the limits of each party's =
resources. Whether the response produced by the market is at all fair =
is another -- far more subjective -- question, and that's where =
regulators come in.
-Steve=
