[11490] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: The whole CIX concept is flawed
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sean McLinden)
Mon Apr 4 12:33:18 1994
Date: Mon, 4 Apr 1994 08:58:43 -0400 (EDT)
From: Sean McLinden <sean@dsl.pitt.edu>
To: stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com
Cc: bzs@world.std.com, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <9404030122.AA07622@bird.crd.Ge.Com>
On Sat, 2 Apr 1994, Dick St.Peters wrote:
> 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.
In parts of India, "cable TV" consists of a piece of coax stretched
across rooftops connected to a dish antenna in someone's yard. If they are
really sexy, they have a bank of VCRs to support "pay per view" as well.
There is a huge digital data network out there that has very low startup
costs, no membership, and a large volume. All you need is $6 bucks a
month for dialtone and you've got FAX; store a bunch of phone numbers in
the thing and you've got routing. Replace FAXes with FAX modems,
computers, and OCR and you have FAX-email gateways. Still no membership
fee. Still at dialtone + usage-based pricing (and if it is in the
metropolitan network, it is flat rate).
Seems to me we didn't need all this planning and jockeying to get there.
Once the concept of dialtone was there, the rest was "easy."
Sean
