[9016] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Your Question about Sprint
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dick St.Peters)
Tue Dec 14 20:08:41 1993
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 93 19:59:19 EST
From: stpeters@spare-parts.crd.ge.com (Dick St.Peters)
To: ckd@kei.com
Cc: com-priv@lists.psi.com
Reply-To: <stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com>
> From: Christopher Davis <ckd@kei.com>
> 3. All members must be legally organized to provide TCP/IP or OSI public
> data internetworking services to the public in multiple geographic areas.
> By this clause (see cix.org:/cix/README) neither of your co-op examples
> would need to be CIX members,
True ... for the examples I happened to give in that posting, but not
for examples I've given in the past.
> Even if they are in "multiple geographic areas" (which your co-ops would,
> of course, not be) they are not providing the services *to the public*.
Ok, that 4-mile dead-end road leading to the compound with my wife's
family's summer home is lined with houses on both sides. About half a
miles from the end is the home of two physicians. Our hypothetical (so
far) pipe has to pass right by them. They'd like to buy some of our
bandwidth. So would a couple of others. Now we're selling to the public.
The first mile of the road is in Warren County, but the last three are
in Washington County. One or more of the people wanting some bandwidth
are along the first mile, in a different county from us, so we're
reselling bandwidth in two towns in different counties. For this we
owe the CIX $10K/yr on top of what we pay our provider ?
> *That* is a sufficiently "nice clean boundary ... that makes ... sense"
> (at least IMHO).
What does "legally organized to provide ... services" mean ? Most
corporations these days are formed to "perform any function permitted
by law" or some equivalent wording. Your neighborhood flower shop
probably qualifies. This part rules out almost nobody.
What does "multiple geographic areas" mean ? What's a geographic
area - a nation? a state? a county? a town/city? a neighborhood?
We're missing that nice clean boundary.
But more importantly, to pick up on Stephen Williams' concerns, this
nation is going to be wired by hundreds or thousands of grassroots
"providers", coops, community health networks, neighborhood networks,
etc. Most of these will start because someone sees a need and forms
a group to fill it. Some of these will be someone's dream of starting
a sizeable networking business, but many of them will back into it
along the lines of the dead-end road example I cited, where simply by
having bandwidth in a place where noone else yet provides it, they will
turn into providers and grow.
This is what happened to the NSF on a national scale, and I think it's
going to happen all over the nation on a community scale. 60% of us
live within 30 miles of a state line and some enormous percentage live
in communities that sprawl across county lines. (If I look out my
window, I have to stand up and look down to see land not in another
county.) A lot of these small providers will bump into state, county,
or town boundaries.
I think having the CIX tax end-providers is not the right way to fund
the CIX.
--
Dick St.Peters
GE Corporate R&D, Schenectady, NY stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com
