[738] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Let 100 Backbones Bloom and Commercial Use
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stephen Wolff)
Fri May 24 16:02:14 1991
To: tmn!cook@uunet.uu.net
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
Date: Fri, 24 May 91 15:31:58 EDT
From: Stephen Wolff <steve@cise.nsf.gov>
Gordon -
No. NSF would not involve itself IN ANY WAY in the business decisions of
its awardees after an award is made; of course, their plans as reflected in
their proposal in response to our competitive solicitation would figure in
the merit review and affect their success in getting what they asked for.
The idea is childishly simple.
* A particular winning proposal might be awarded, say, 200,000 yellow
stamps per year for three years.
* For each "eligible" (cf. the definition of "eligible" in my previous
message) provider, NSF establishes a redemption rate of dollars per
yellow stamp. If we decided, for example, on the recommendation of
our advisory community, to encourage the continued existence of a
struggling vendor, or a start-up, we would redeem yellow stamps at a
higher rate for them than we would for a more established and
prosperous vendor.
* Each vendor would have a price list for its spectrum of offerings, with
the prices given both in dollars (for any walk-in-off-the-street
customer) and in yellow stamps (for NSF awardees). Yes, presumably
anyone could infer NSF's redemption rate for that vendor by comparing
the two sets of "prices," but so what?
* The awardee with yellow stamps to spend looks at the yellow stamp
pricelist of all eligible vendors and chooses how to spend the stamps.
Yes, this makes life a little difficult for NSF, as we don't know until the
stamps are redeemed how many actual dollars are being spent and that makes
budgeting awkward. And yes, there are a number of details that would have
to be worked out if this were NSF's chosen option, but nothing I think
fundamental.
-s
