[1206] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Network World "The Vision of a national research net needs rethinking"
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (matsb@sics.se)
Fri Aug 23 07:09:32 1991
To: Edward Vielmetti <emv@ox.com>
Cc: com-priv@uu.psi.com, 0003904868@mcimail.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 21 Aug 91 18:17:27 -0400.
Date: Fri, 23 Aug 91 13:07:41 +0200
From: matsb@sics.se
As an outsider I have now followed the NREN-discuss/SOM-PRIV discussions
for quite some time.
To me coming from Sweden the problems are almost common to over here:
- there is no Gigabit end-to-end technology today
- unless there is a reasonable market, the carriers and Industry won't
make the necessary investment (apart from the Government funding)
in R&D to develop the technology
- The issues technical constraints are severe, nobody can claim to have
sovled a piece, e g ATM and then THEN trying to adapt to this for the
rest of the design.
- the market must be given a sying on how the services should look like
pricing models and so forth
This leads me to think that the proposed NREN activites are quite close to
ideal.
To me the amount of goverment money are not so vast, compared to the
sums put in by AT&T/Bell labs, Bellcore, and rest of the industry.
The extra goverment money may jast be to ensure taht the resluts meets
the markets needs in a reasonable way.
The hard part seems to be the INTERIM period where the pilot services
to develop the technology and the market is paid by goverment funding
directly. Seen in a longer term perspective it might be just right.
But, as in the case with ANS, NSF pays only for part of the total
network service, and this may well be that case ones the new technology
is in place.
--mats
