[2640] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Who would have been subsidizing whom
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jordan Becker)
Thu Mar 26 01:02:03 1992
Date: Thu, 26 Mar 92 0:52:06 EST
From: Jordan Becker <becker@ans.net>
To: com-priv@psi.com
> <<MESSAGE from>> Gordon Cook 25-MAR-92 0:41
> cook@tmn
> Someone earlier this evening said that one provider handled the problem
> of commercial use by letting such folk pay MORE for their interconnect and
> then contributing to an infrastructure fund... This sounds like it is
> describing a feature brought to us by ANS.}i
>
> I believe that it errors in its description. The commercial customer did
> not have to pay more rather every mid-level network that agreed to receive
> the commercial customers traffic would have to agree to pay more. In
> other words with rate increases to the mid-levels presumably passed on to
> their connected institutions the R&E community would subsidize the
> commercial customer. To make matters worse to the best of my recollection
> ANS was never able to explain with any precision to any mid-level just
> exactly HOW MUCH the increase in its (the mid-level's) operating expenses
> would be.
All plans proposed by ANS assess incremental charges to the commercial
customer or the network that hosts the commercial customer. ANS is flexible
in discussing the method for incremental charges with midlevels (e.g. COMBITs
or other). It is presumed that the midlevels which host commercial networks
recover the incremental charges from those commercial networks, although this
is up to the midlevel to decide. Other midlevels that interconnect only R&E
institutions pay nothing additional. This way commercial customers end up
subsidizing the R&E use of the network and not the other way around.
Jordan
