[1914] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Understanding Combits
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Gong)
Tue Jan 7 20:36:08 1992
To: sean@dsl.pitt.edu (sean mclinden)
Cc: jgong@us.oracle.com, lars@spectrum.CMC.COM, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 07 Jan 92 18:56:13 -0500.
Date: Tue, 07 Jan 92 17:32:25 PST
From: "John Gong" <jgong@us.oracle.com>
>
> > Hear, hear. Put the money into providing more accessible services and
> > information. Then customers will decide whether they're willing to pay
> > for it (they will) and how fast/how much they want (pipe size-oriented fee
> > schedule).
> That works if you know what you want, where it is, and how to get it. But
> suppose that we had a highway system in which you paid by the mile and by
> the speed at which you travelled, but had no maps and no idea where to go.
> How would you decide what was the value (or worth) of any trip?
The service and information I'm alluding to would have to tell me what I
was getting and how to get to it before I'd pay for it.
BTW, what I meant by "how much" is how many people would want to use the
link, i.e. 200 people using the connection require more than 2 persons.
I am not an advocate of pay per byte. In fact, I hate it.
> > It seems to me that much of this discussion has centered around how NSF
> > spends its money. From a free market standpoint, the CIX affiliates have
> > demonstrated some downward pricing from competition or economies of scale,
> > as pointed out by another writer. The EFF and other folk interested in
> > enlightening the masses seem to want to see the NSF monies diverted to thei
r
> > causes. Can someone describe how they would like to see a grassroots
> > effort evolve? $19/mo. for dialing into> a CIX affiliate for email and
> > USENET (tm) and other future services sounds pretty cheap to me, already.
> > I wouldn't advocate government subsidies in order to provide the same
> > service for, say half the cost to the general public. This government
> > gives out a lot already. I don't want an information welfare system
> > put in place. And really, I'm not a high tech elitist. I just think
> > there's a limit to how low valuable services should be priced.
> What about *essential* services. What is available on the Internet, now, is
> not just a business tool, it is an educational tool of tremendous value. It
> is all the technical journals, plus Consumer Reports, plus a lot of other
> things rolled into one. To talk of it as simply an e-mail/USENET news reader
> is, I think to choose a very poor metaphor.
I think what I described is the *essential*. What you mention after that
is what I mean by putting the money into offering those kinds of services
instead of additional piping. If these services where somehow implemented
via existing funds diverted from pipebuilding, then they should be no-low
cost and placed in the *essential* category.
> The computer (where, as Sun says "the network *is* the computer), is the
> the most valuable educational tool yet produced. It allows you to educate
> yourself at whatever pace you can sustain (or, in your world, wha> tever
> pace you can afford). Would you want your children's education to be billed
> by the minute (or by the byte) independent of what they actually used?
No argument. Just understand that I didn't mean pay per byte.
> And what about "dialing in." That may be sufficient for you, but people
> (and I mean normal citizens) are putting whole networks in their homes.
> Although groups such as the CODA group at CMU are working on disconnected
> mode filesystem, a great many Internet applications require connected
> mode to maintain reliability. Perhaps, in the future, disconnected
> operations supported on switched services will be the way to share a limited
> bandwidth, equitably. But that isn't what's running on the campuses of
> CMU, Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, or scores of other places.
I have tremendous access to electronic
resources throughout the world by nature of my job. I use only a fraction
of it. My company pays for my ability to have this capability while I am
here at work because it expects some tangible payback from it.
When I'm at home, I know that I have to pay for what I use. I can afford to
have a dialup to CIX or Compuserve or Prodigy, etc. I cannot afford
access speeds enabling me to perform AFS and whatnot even though I would like
to. Would I like to have it at a very reasonable rate? Yes! But only if
my tax bill doesn't leave me hungry come April 15. Will someone please
tell me how this can be done without it being an additional tax burden?
Is it realistic that I can have these visionary services at the cost of
my dialup capabilities today?
> My argument is that the vision is wrong, the metaphor is wrong, and as
> a result, we are running the risk of designing an implementation which
> addresses the wrong problems at the wrong price. If information equity
> is what you call "welfare" perhaps we cannot afford NOT to have it.
Pac Bell has basic "Lifeline" telephone service that is subsidized by other
subscribers. I don't have a beef with this model. I don't expect to have
the subsidy show up on my tax bill, however.
Likewise, I will be willing to subsidize truly *essential* services for
the great masses. But anything fancy on top of that should be out of their own
pockets.
> Sean McLinden
Thank you for your description of what's needed. I am sincerely in favor
of providing as much service at the lowest possible cost to everyone. But
it's not going to be done by redistributing NSF funds to organizations
that provide the services. THese organizations will need to figure out
another way to make (or not lose) money in a sound businesslike manner. I
am tired of being a middle class tax victim. What ever happened to paying
for what you want and need?
Lastly, It is truly tiresome
sifting through the "How the Pipe-r Gets Paid" arguments. Yes, they
are possibly on the threshold of making history with a new and unique
infrastructure, but more interesting to me is what's done with it.
John Gong jgong@us.oracle.com
