[10620] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: CCN's Clarification re: Internet Local Loop
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Gary R Wright)
Tue Mar 1 19:49:48 1994
From: gwright@world.std.com (Gary R Wright)
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 1994 02:33:12 GMT
To: com-priv@psi.com
In article <Pine.3.07.9402272305.B19370-c100000@cap.gwu.edu>,
Richard Civille <rciville@civicnet.org> wrote:
>"Collocation Tariff for Flat-rate Data Service: The Information
>Infrastructure Task Force should immediately propose that the Federal
>Communications Commission study appropriate local-loop tariffs that can
>support non-profit, educational, small-business and residential access to
>the Internet. In particular, a co-location tariff for flat-rate packet
>data service would allow entrepreneurial vendors to provide affordable
>Internet access to small businesses, non-profit agencies, schools,
>libraries, municipal agencies, and individual households. CCN will work
>to develop a model tariff."
You can buy today in many locations flat, unlimited access to an
Internet connected host for $10 - $20 dollars/month. All you would
need would be a cheap modem and a dumb terminal and you can access
email, newsgroups, etc. If you want to download files/software etc,
you'll need to buy a computer.
This type of a service is *much* cheaper by far than any sort of
direct IP-connected service available today. Setting up and running
a TCP/IP host is getting easier but certainly costs something in
additional software and time. Even if you are directly connected,
you need a *permanently* connected host to spool newsgroups and mail
for you and who knows what other services that will pop up in the
future.
Certainly there are many places where this type of service is not a
local phone call away but Internet service providers are sprouting up
all over. Probably faster than any regulations could ever keep up with
them.
Why is fixed rate local-loop Internet a more cost efficient scheme than
analog modem dialup to a local Internet service? Maybe the government
should subsidize these local Internet service providers instead of
focusing on the local loop? I think the market is going to find solutions
to these problems *much* faster and more efficiently that any
legislative process could ever hope of matching.
Perhaps, sometime in the future, Internet access will be a service
that we consider indispensable, but it certainly isn't anywhere near
that today. Why are we talking about regulated access to something
that is easily justified (IMHO) and purchased by a business or
non-profit organization but for personal use is really a luxury?
