[9119] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: The Buffalo Free-Net / NYSERNet / PSI problems
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Glenn S. Tenney)
Fri Dec 17 22:16:21 1993
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 1993 18:56:55 -0800
To: com-priv@psi.com
From: tenney@netcom.com (Glenn S. Tenney)
At 8:39 PM 12/17/93 -0500, Barry Shein wrote:
>And what's special about networks here? I mean, why can't I go to my
>local movie theater by the same reasoning and say, hey, you're going
>to run the film anyhow, what's the marginal cost of one more person
>sitting in the audience (we'll assume an unfilled theater just like
>you reason about e-mail just fitting in the empty interstices), why
>not just let me in for free?
Barry, your analogy is quite a bit off... The example you were giving
about a movie theater is based on profit (or at least income) rather than
marginal COST. The marginal cost for 101 people in a 500 person theater
vs. 100 people is virtually nil. The loss of revenue (and hopefully
profit) is significant.
Why not just use the net as a real example and tell what the marginal cost
would be if:
I buy a T1 link from XYZ company; I pay for the routers, phone lines,
whatever; I agree to pay XYZ based on the size of my pipe. What is the
marginal cost to XYZ if I have 1 or 100 machines on my end of the pipe, or
if my one machine has 1 or 1000 users (my users or customers never even
know about XYZ, they don't even know who I buy my pipe from)?
---
Glenn Tenney
tenney@netcom.com Amateur radio: AA6ER
(415) 574-3420 Fax: (415) 574-0546
