[11111] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: What is an "Internet reseller"?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Glenn S. Tenney)
Tue Mar 22 04:37:55 1994
Date: Mon, 21 Mar 1994 17:55:13 -0800
To: com-priv@psi.com
From: tenney@netcom.com (Glenn S. Tenney)
At 7:40 PM 3/21/94 -0500, Barry Shein wrote:
>So long as connections are flat-rate then the most rational thing to
>do is to sell those lines AND limit or discourage high-volume usage,
>since as a provider you're going to have to provide the carriage
>(infrastructure, backbone etc) within the same, fixed price; that's
>all you get to spend delivering the service, period. ...
>The problem is not the way the bread lines are being run, the problem
>is that we need to bake more bread. And the only way at hand to
>encourage baking more bread is to let the bakers charge per loaf.
Actually, we are talking about so many different things that analogies do
not work.
Let's take SLIP alone for a moment...
If I want to offer a SLIP-only dedicated-line service, I need:
* an incoming phone line with a modem
* a port on a router
* a connection to some net
That's all.
And note, that ALL of those resources that I have to purchase are already
flat rated to me -- there are NO usage charges for ANY of them.
Why then shouldn't I charge you a flat rate too?
This is completely unlike your bread/bread-line analogy...
---
Glenn Tenney
tenney@netcom.com Amateur radio: AA6ER
(415) 574-3420 Fax: (415) 574-0546
