[11496] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: What's an ISP again...?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Glenn S. Tenney)
Mon Apr 4 18:54:48 1994
Date: Mon, 4 Apr 1994 10:17:25 -0800
To: com-priv@psi.com
From: tenney@netcom.com (Glenn S. Tenney)
At 3:11 PM 4/4/94 +0200, Simon Poole wrote:
>EUnet has a number of national organisations in ex-eastern block and
>developing countries (mainly North Africa). ...
But, are THEY each required to be CIX members (they're reselling IP addresses)?
>While I would agree that for an independent operation in any of these
>countries $10k is an incrediable amount of money, it pales in comparision
>to the costs of getting connectivity there in the first place (inter-
>national leased lines), regulatory issues (nearly all these countries
>have state telecommunications monopolies) and competition from subsidised
>operations.
In some of the cases I know of, it is the government that is doing this, so
there are NO regulatory issues. In some cases, they're using wireless, so
there's not so much of a problem with cost of leased lines. The point
being that the $10K IS a problem for them, and they are NOT trying (yet) to
make enough money to justify charging a few hundred a user -- hell, those
users can't afford the few hundred extra either. As you said, they're
having to draw blood out of turnips to get the money just to hook up.
>I would be suprised if any of the current CIX members would have problems
>with supporting Internet service provision in developing countries in
>one way or another, however this was and is not the issue discussed in
>the current thread.
Which is why this is a new thread...
Ah, so the CIX' rules are not cast in concrete, they can apply or not
depending on the circumstances...
---
Glenn Tenney
tenney@netcom.com Amateur radio: AA6ER
(415) 574-3420 Fax: (415) 574-0546
