[145] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: NSF censoring sites around the Internet
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (matsb@sics.se)
Tue Nov 13 09:28:35 1990
To: steve@cise.nsf.gov
Cc: Dan Schlitt <dan@sci.ccny.cuny.edu>, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 13 Nov 90 08:00:54 -0500.
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 90 15:13:45 +0100
From: matsb@sics.se
Steve Wollf wrote:
Ah, but suppose the Materials Science Directorate of the Funding
Agency were the retailer of, say, "Networking Yellow Stamps" which
it received from a benefactor in the Network Infrastructure stall of
the same stable? Only convertible into Real Money when used for
buying network access from the recipient's vendor of choice. Can't
pay grad students with them, nor buy more lab equipment. -s
We have tried this system in Sweden for computing some years ago. It
did not work out. Either the hevy users went out of "cupons" and had
to find "real" money to buy additional services. The small users who
did not use his cupons saw "his" money go to the Computer center
without being able to use it.
We also have (still I beleive) the system where the goverment provides
the housing for Univesrsities, another gov function provides the money
for salaries and a third the money for new equipment to new research
areas, guess what the possibilities are that the needs seen from the
researcher is met at the same time by this method? Suboptimization is the word!
Three points:
- The total cost for doing research with "modern" tools like computing and
now networking, compare with gong from typewriter to PC, and also the
library function today copared to yesterday, the question is what the
TOTAL cost analysis looks like
- The cost for providing network services are normally fixed, with stepwise
inceases becase we are still in build-up phase. The cost consists to a large
extent of personell costs for operating the network and bandwidth. The
only way of decreasing the cost is to share these costs among as many
"customers" as possible. This also means that the network must be
able to solcve as many of the "customers" needs as possible, thus making it
cost effective. I have the strange feeling that datacomm services
still subsidice telephone and thus fax services. The FAX service
should not be so hard to beat cost wise given the "right" network service
price.
- The development efforts are still vast. These costs are very often mixed
into the "service provision" costs, either by the serviceprovider themselves
or even worse by the carriers (especially here in Europe) so that the
"real" cost is only a fiction.
--mats
