[8924] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Scenarios: a response to Marvin
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Marvin Sirbu)
Sun Dec 12 21:58:50 1993
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 1993 21:56:04 -0500 (EST)
From: Marvin Sirbu <ms6b+@andrew.cmu.edu>
To: com-priv@psi.com, cook@path.net (Gordon Cook)
Cc:
In-Reply-To: <9312121135.aa17322@pandora.sf.ca.us>
Excerpts from internet.com-priv: 12-Dec-93 Scenarios: a response to Ma..
by Gordon Cook@path.net
> 2. do you overlook all the specialized things that regionals do to support
> their customers at levels 3 and above in the stack? Also what about
regionals
> knowing and being able to respond to their local customers better and more
> effectively that folks like MFS or Sprint? (I'm recalling Mandelbaum's 1990
> Harvard paper on the future of the regionals.)
My previous post may have appeared overly negative with respect to the
future of the regionals. There will always be a role for service
oriented companies to play the middleman between end users and commodity
suppliers. In the voice world we see resellers of Centrex service, and
system integrators to whom end users outsource procurement of their
tandem networks. We also see resale carriers who combine raw trunking
with switching and other services. In the computer equipment business
we have direct sales by manufacturers and we have OEM sales where
additional value is provided by third parties.
If a regional does its job well, many campuses or corporations will find
it preferable to deal with a locally managed, service oriented regional
than with a large national service provider.
It seems likely to me, however, that NSPs and regionals will be
increasingly in competition with each other.
Marvin Sirbu
