[589] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: At What Price Will TCP/IP Connections Gain Wide Market Appeal?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Gordon Lee)
Mon Apr 15 11:41:58 1991
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 11:41:11 -0400
To: Bob Sutterfield <bob@morningstar.com>
From: gordon@ftp.com (Gordon Lee)
Reply-To: gordon@ftp.com
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
From: Bob Sutterfield <bob@morningstar.com>
I suspect (without hard evidence, and I'd love to be refuted) that much
of the demand so far has been generated by students who remember the
network from their school days.
Allow me to serve as your first datapoint. I spent 82-87 as a student
at Boston Univ where I took the Internet for granted (maybe not right
from the start, but anyway...) Once I got out I worked for Texet, then
Banyan, now FTP. My two former employers had very little in the way of
Internet connectivity when I began working there (maybe one broken UUCP
link). At both places I crusaded the idea of getting hooked up. It was
hard going because of my relative juniority, but I got as far as UUCP mail
forwarding at "texet.com" and plugging in the NEARnet router at Banyan.
My experience demonstrates that former-student-demand is a factor, but I
would guess that it is not as significant a factor (yet) as one may suppose.
Most of my colleagues at my former workplaces were not very familiar with
the Internet mostly because they were 7-15 yrs older than me. Perhaps in
another 4-7 yrs you will see this become a much more significant factor.
So, I cannot confirm nor refute, but instead say "Too early to tell..."
== Gordon Lee FTP Software Inc
== voice: (617) 246-0900 26 Princess St
== fax: (617) 245-7943 Wakefield, MA 01880
