[168] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Funding the network
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dan Schlitt)
Thu Nov 15 09:43:58 1990
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 90 09:25:17 -0500
From: Dan Schlitt <dan@sci.ccny.cuny.edu>
To: steve@cise.nsf.gov
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
steve@cise.nsf.gov replies to me:
>
>> What if there aren't enough stamps at an institution to buy a connection and
>> the administration chooses not to provide the extra money -- real money.
>
>I dunno. Maybe the institution applies to NSF for more stamps and submits to
>the peer review process?
It's your proposal. The funding agency can't just print the stamps so
it has to have the money in its budget somewhere, probably not in a
research oriented division. So what is the gain over funding it all
at an institutional level by an infrastructure grant?
>
>> Can I trade my stamps to another grantee who wants networking for bits of
>> equipment?
>
>I can see arguments both ways; the purist answer is "Why not?"
>
>> The vendor will exchange the stamps for real money at a rate set by the
>> government. Who will determine that the grantee is getting full value?
>
>That's not a worry if the marketplace is competitive.
The efficient pricing in a competitive market assumes many suppliers
and low barriers to entry into the market. You won't have enough
suppliers and the barriers to entry are high. The pricing will be
administered and not market driven. The only real question is who
administers the prices, the firm or a government regulatory agency.
Only the latter has a chance of seeing that the grantee gets full
value. But I gather that government regulation is what people on this
list want to avoid.
/dan
