[11450] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: The whole CIX concept is flawed
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dick St.Peters)
Sun Apr 3 03:48:38 1994
Date: Sat, 2 Apr 94 20:22:30 EST
From: stpeters@bird.crd.ge.com (Dick St.Peters)
To: bzs@world.std.com
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
Reply-To: <stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com>
>From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
>A $10K/yr fee is not enough to be considered anti-competitive. The
>mere existence of someone who cannot raise $10K is not proof to the
>contrary, we can probably find someone who can't raise $10. $100K/yr
>might be more in the range, $1M/yr I'd say certainly. But $10K/yr? I
>mean, what kind of capital are these businesses using?
They'd better be using none if they want to survive. The first rule
on how to go broke is to pay recurring expenses out of capital.
There's no provider out there with the capital or inclination to wire
the vast stretches of the countryside. As gwh (I think) said awhile
back, the big guys are all chasing after the big markets.
However, there are lots of us who'd be glad to serve the small markets,
for revenue that little more than covered our costs - or perhaps didn't
even completely cover them. When word got out around here that I might
do this, I had people show up at my door wanting to be customers or
participants, people with businesses that need networking but can't
afford it.
I could get a T1 and string out 56s to people nearby and maybe run one
up to Russ Nelson, so he can get his mail list business off the ground,
and maybe each of these people share their costs with others, and some
of them set up as SLIP/PPP providers. The model works moneywise, but
not if the CIX wants $10K from me, $10K from Russ, and $10K from Russ's
neighbor the SLIP provider.
I wouldn't expect any one of these people to generate revenue of
$10K/yr above costs. We're out to help cover our own networking costs
and spread the gospel. We've got a guy who has rounded up some funding
for a freenet but not enough to go it alone. None of us wants to be in
so deep that when the big providers do look this way we're blown out of
the water. (Ok, some may have dreams, and someday maybe they can
afford a CIX fee.)
--
Dick St.Peters, Gatekeeper, The Pearly Gateway; currently at:
GE Corporate R&D, Schenectady, NY stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com
