[11437] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
The whole CIX concept is flawed
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barry Shein)
Sat Apr 2 21:24:24 1994
Date: Sat, 2 Apr 1994 18:36:52 -0500
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: jlw@cs.columbia.edu
Cc: bilse@eu.net, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: James Waldrop's message of Sat, 02 Apr 1994 18:09:05 -0500 <199404022309.SAA24587@shekel.cs.columbia.edu>
>From: James Waldrop <jlw@cs.columbia.edu>
>Consider a small startup, selling shell accounts to people (or just
>some sort of internet connectivity). They'd like to offer SLIP, but
>it means laying out $10K on top of everything else...
>
>Some friends of mine are having to lay down $6k for a T1 (that's up
>front), and probably don't have the cash to also plunk down $10K
>for a CIX membership. Not to mention that there *are* better things
>to spend that on...
As I said previously, I have no doubt there exist people on this
planet who do not have the $10K, or more to the point would rather
spend that money on something else (including just keeping it in their
pocket.)
There *are* excesses that an argument like this might apply to, but
it's not to a fee like $10K. If you believe you are not getting
anything for that fee, however, by all means don't pay it.
One wonders what they plan to *EARN* from selling this access?
Nothing? If so then perhaps their business plan needs another going
over. $10K will barely keep two people paid a modest salary and
benefits and sitting in an office somewhere with minimal amenities
such as furniture, phones, fax, copy machine etc. for one month.
$10K/year is $833/month. That's less than my electric bill and we're
hardly a Sprint or whatever, we have about 12 employees in rather
typical office space. Are these people being realistic? Are they
getting good advice?
Anyhow, I can see this is going to go around and around and it's
pretty easy to simply assert that $10K is a fabulous amount of money
and that's that, there are certainly no facts involved on either point
of view.
However, one also has to wonder about businesses like this which go
out and hawk to the public w/o the ability to conceive of raising $10K
in predictable expenses (unpredictable? you have my sympathy.) Will
they fold over the first refund or bump in the road (e.g. some
critical piece of equipment failing)? Are they viable at all? Or is
there some point at which they're just hawking vapor, the thinnest
veneer of offering a service to the public?
It's an interesting question, something consumers might have an
interest in.
-Barry Shein
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