[2161] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: low-end users
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Richard Mandelbaum)
Tue Jan 28 20:41:34 1992
To: Dave Crocker <dcrocker@mordor.stanford.edu>
Cc: rma@tsar.cc.rochester.edu, bjp@sura.net, com-priv@psi.com,
In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 28 Jan 92 14:47:41 -0800.
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 92 20:38:38 -0500
From: Richard Mandelbaum <rma@tsar.cc.rochester.edu>
I couldn't agree with you more. I think low cost service are possible
and that we will eventually get there. I believe that our spinning off
of PSI as an independent for-profit was a step in that direction as is
our sponsering of free and low cost (i.e subsidized) connection programs
or libraries and K-12 schools. (we have about 40 such institutions as
affiliates and hope to increase that by a factor of 10-25 in the next 3-5
years. Better tools and the banishing of words such as ftp,rlogin,telnet,
smtp,nntp udp,tcp etc. etc. from the new user's lexicon is part of the
process. I am sometimes upset though by the assumption that those
institutions which charge true costs are somehow ripping someone off.
I think that that is untrue. I think we have to continue to work for
subsidized rates for new and low-end users and clearly identify who is
doing the subsidization, rather thanget annoyed at PSI or ANS or BARRNET
or NSF or anyone else for not subsidizing whom we want to be subsidized.
If we want to subsidize groups we should make the case for the subsidy
and get the funds. In the Past few years NYSERNet went to IBM and got over
100K specifically to subsidize Internet based programs aimed at high schools.
Similarly we are applying to appropriate federal,state and private agencies
for monies for programs aimed at K-8,9-12, undergraduate education,
education of the disabled,libraries etc. We are not whining about how
everyone out there is not doing enough and this stuff should be free
and how dare you charge so much. I don't think such complaining really
accomplishes much.
Sorry to get on a soap box ,but the noise to content ratio of this list
sometimes gets to me!
Richard
____________________
Richard,
While it certainly is necessary to make sure that the discussion on
low-end economics starts with a reasonable economic analysis of base
costs, such as properly calculating the fully loaded cost of a full-ti
me
person, I hope that there can be some movement towards consideration o
f
the real limitations to achieving reduced costs.
Of course, one line of thought is that it can't be achieved. But rath
er
than pack up and go home, I'd like to suggest looking for other
views.
We pay modest rates for telephone service. Even if you look at
commercial phone service, rather than home (since home service tends t
o
be subsidized by commercial) then we still see reasonable rates. And
the
service is not constrained to single-function (equivalent to limiting
yourself to email, rather than full IP.) Better still, the quality of
customer support tends to be quite high.
Well, one point is that they DO have service limitation, in that you
only get local calls for the flat fee, but it is worth noting that the
current IP providers don't have to pay packet charges to other packet
carriers (true?) so that some of the logic dictating a similar
local/long split would seem not to apply.
My feeling is that the cause of the current cost problem, due to
the cost of support, is that too much support is needed. That is, we
haven't done anything approaching an adequate job of making hosts
and nets plug-and-play. And I don't see anything coming out of the
IETF to fix that anytime soon. Yet I keep thinking that this is a
problem -- well, a set of problems -- that CAN be solved.
Seems like there is an opportunity, here, though not an easy one.
Dave
