[377] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
ANS/CONCERT
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Alan Blatecky)
Thu Mar 14 16:36:31 1991
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 91 16:20:06 -0500
From: Alan Blatecky <alanb@concert.net>
To: com-priv@psi.com
Marty Schoffstall writes:
> >From what I have heard is that their nightmare appears to be here, consider
> thefollowing:
>
> - when ANS was pre-announced one of the active opponents of this was
> SURANET
>
> 1- within a few months ANS appeared to have removed a large portion of
> SURANET's membership in North Carolina (Concert), I actually
> have a draft press release somewhere
>
> - and a few months later SURANET is negotiating a co-marketing agreement
> with ANS
>
> Now I'm not saying that these are related in anyway I'm simply giving
> the chronological order.
>
> Another case comes to mind, Exxon research in NJ:
>
> - JVNCNet appears to have "won" this important customer due to the
> long established relationships with Princeton (that is what
> we were told)
>
> - within a few months JVNCNet is dumped and Exxon is going to ANS since
> they can supply (through IBM Yorktown Heights) speciality software
> for their IBM machine.
>
>
> Now in both cases to my knowledge ANS hasn't actually delivered anything,
> but that really isn't important (right?), it is the possible intentions
> that they reflect, according to some.
I'd like to clear up a couple of the misconceptions regarding connections
to ANS and specifically regarding CONCERT. CONCERT, a high performance
T3 data network and an interactive NTSC video network in North Carolina,
provides a variety of advanced communications services to researchers and
educators including Internet access. For a variety of reasons, we selected
ANS as the vendor of choice to connect NC to the Internet. And, as of
February 4, 1991, ANS has been providing superb service, from installation
to trouble-shooting to monitoring. At the same time, we have continued a
relationship to SURAnet, but, do not depend on (or use) SURAnet circuits
for Internet access.
I'm not sure where the notion that ANS hasn't actually delivered anything
comes from, as we have had exactly the opposite experience in all our
dealings with ANS, and, would highly recommend them to any regional, state,
business or university interested in high quality, cost-beneficial,
Internet access.
Alan Blatecky
Vice President, Director Center for Communications
