[1192] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
ANS Competitor to Announce?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stephen Wolff)
Thu Aug 15 10:57:41 1991
To: edtjda@magic322.chron.com (Joe Abernathy)
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 91 10:39:38 EDT
From: Stephen Wolff <steve@ncri.cise.nsf.gov>
Gosh, Joe; I wish I had your ears ;-)
Well, for starters, the NSFNET is NOT a contract. The NSFNET Backbone is
managed by Merit, Inc. under a "cooperative agreement" with the NSF (that's
one of the funding vehicles available to the Federal gummint; the others
that I know about are the "contract" and the "grant").
The award to Merit was made after an open competition (Solicitation announced
in the Commerce Business Daily, public meeting of interested parties, the
whole bit) at the conclusion of which the several proposals were evaluated
by an ad hoc panel of respected experts from the public and private sectors,
sans peur et sans reproche, strictly according to the criteria that were
listed in the Solicitation. The panel made a recommendation to NSF staff,
and we selected Merit as the winner.
The five-year award to Merit expires in November 1992. The National Science
Foundation is totally and irrevocably committed to the continuation and
expansion of high-speed networking for the nation's community of scholars
involved in research and education. Appropriate mechanisms for fulfilling
this commitment after 11/92 have, as you know, been under free, public,
open, sometimes noisy and occasionally acrimonious discussion since late
last year, starting with the first NSF-sponsored Harvard workshop,
continuing with, i.a., many megabytes of mail to com-priv@psi.com, and
including the NSF-sponsored FARNET meeting in Big Sky, Montana, earlier this
week.
This NSF-initiated process is nearing a conclusion, and NSF staff are close
to developing a recommendation to our management. It will befall me to
convince the Assistant Director, the Director, and the National Science
Board that we have involved the affected communities adequately and arrived
at a solution that is workable, acceptable, and effective.
Whatever that solution may be, it will - as it did in 1987 - involve free
and open competition based on publicly-announced criteria and resolved by
strictly-conducted review(s). We cannot and will not do otherwise.
The public investment made by IBM and MCI in the current NSFNET Backbone has
generated enormous benefit to US scholars, industrial as well as academic.
But I firmly believe competition improves the breed; I was personally
delighted at US Sprint's successful bid to become our International
Connections Manager (again, after an open competition) and we shall welcome
the entry of further players into the arena.
I anticipate with a good deal of pleasure a vigorously competed future for
NSFNET; of course ANS will be a strong contender, but it will not be the
only one and perhaps not even the largest.
Hope this helps. -s
