[10165] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Adbusters article on net.commericialism needs your input
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barry Shein)
Wed Feb 9 23:58:00 1994
Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 23:56:11 -0500
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: shell@sfu.ca
Cc: comp-org-eff-talk@cs.utexas.edu, com-priv@psi.com,
In-Reply-To: Stanton McCandlish's message of Wed, 9 Feb 1994 12:08:30 -0500 (EST) <199402091708.MAA11655@eff.org>
>1.a: Contrary to what "they" (meaning corporate commercial market
>forces) would have you believe, the Internet *is* free. The actual
>cost of the largest chunk of the Net--the NSF Backbone--is about
>$20 million per year (source: Stephen S. Wolff, the director of the
>Division of Networking and Communications Research and
>Infrastructure at the National Science Foundation).
That's false.
I believe you got the $20M figure from Steve Wolff, but I doubt very
much he said this consitutes the largest chunk of the net. Nor is it
even remotely true.
>Divided by the
>20,000,000 users of the net, this equals one dollar a person.
Hence, you should have suspected your own figures.
>Not surprisingly, commercial
>analogues of this network have sprung up in recent years and more
>are planned. Why? Because "they" realize how cheap it actually is
>to do--and how profitable.
Convenient backwards reasoning, but your assumptions are false. Most
of these commercial nets, individually, are bigger than the NSF net
backbone. The NSF net backbone is a particularly inexpensive
(relatively) piece of the pie, primarily because they only service
other network providers. It's also shrinking relative to the rest of
the net as rapidly as the net is growing. The fastest growing segment
of the US network is the commercial end-user sector, and they are
technically not invited onto the NSFnet. So how are they all getting
on? Probably the next fastest growing arena is Europe, and surely
they're not benefiting directly from the US Nat'l Science Foundation
network (indirectly, of course, but somehow they're getting their own
act together, and it's certainly not with US Tax Dollars.)
Note, for example, that the $20M/year figure doesn't even take into
account the several academic regional providers such as NEARnet,
BARRnet, OARnet, CERFnet, THEnet, SURAnet, CONCERTnet, etc. Let alone
the purely commercial providers (Alternet, PSI, Sprint, etc.)
Do you happen to have any figures or even statements from those who do
this for a living as to what the margins are?
>2. One must ask, when considering the future of the data
>superhighway, "The Internet is growing exponentially while
>commercial services like Compuserve grow relatively slowly,
Then how do you explain, for example, the recent article in the NY
Times reporting that America OnLine had to stop accepting new users
last week because of explosive growth (they claim to have doubled
their some hundred thousand user base in the past 3 months)?
>2a. As stated above the Net is "free."
Really? Then what on earth is Software Tool & Die, a commercial
internet provider I happen to run, spending over $1M/year on (and this
is our only business)? No one here has gotten rich from this,
virtually every nickel goes to staff, overhead (rent, electricity etc)
and investment in the services (computing systems, network equipment,
etc.)
>We must not let ourselves be duped
>by big business, who want us to believe it will cost billions
>to implement the kind of superhighway that America needs.
>With ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) and existing
>phone and cable lines, much can be done for very cheap. And even
>so, say the new infrastructure costs $2 billion. If you divide this
>by the current 20 million users (and growing by 1 million per month)
>you get only $100 per user. In other words, if each user paid only
>$8.34/mo for a year the whole thing would be paid for!
I'd say we'd be well off just not being duped by you.
This is equivalent to saying that a phone line costs only $20/month so
that's the cost of the internet. Gee, then how come your typical user
has to have $2,000-$3,000 worth of PC, modem etc?
You are making exactly this error in your above calculations. Yes,
bare data lines are fairly inexpensive. Routers cost $15,000 or more
each, etc. A T1 line alone is a very sorry thing to look at, it looks
a lot like a piece of wire.
And what about the staff to run it all? Do you think all this amazing
stuff just works by itself? Hah! At every level are people sweating it
out making it work.
Even at a university where the network connection per se may be
completely subsidized it is a mere bagatelle of the costs. Most
sizeable computing centers would be happy to show you it costs them
another few million per year (and even that rarely includes things
like rent, electricity etc) to keep it all running.
Taking that one more step, I envision you like a student at one of
university sites convincing himself, gee, this stuff is all free! You
have forgotten about your tuition...
Anyhow, this is all very naive. I advise you to look into the actual
facts before forming such strong opinions. Even superficial
examination shows your reasoning to be flawed.
One more question: This note begins with a call for a petition.
To whom will this petition be addressed? Is this a plan to request
that the govt be more involved in the information highway and its
regulation?
If so I request you present the petition to Jesse Helms. I am sure, as
a representative of our govt, he will be most interested in your
suggestion that he utilize the govt to take more control of this
resource...food for thought.
>That's it for now. Hope this generates some good debate.
Me too, but somehow I doubt it and suspect it will just become an
exercise in "are you a believer or not?" and the facts will be
discounted, some noise will be made, and nothing shall come of it
other than having defused what might have been some useful energy
resulting in a bunch of disillusioned people. You don't get too many
shots to cry wolf, better make sure there's a wolf out there!
-Barry Shein
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