[9127] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
anyone for an Internet buying coop?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Miles R Fidelman)
Sat Dec 18 13:34:54 1993
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 1993 13:25:07 -0500 (EST)
From: Miles R Fidelman <fidelman@civicnet.org>
Reply-To: Miles R Fidelman <fidelman@civicnet.org>
To: nii_agenda@civicnet.org, com-priv@psi.com, communet@nysernet.org
Hi Folks,
There's been a lot of traffic recently about the difficulties small
Internet providers, FreeNets, etc. have in acquiring Internet service for
resale and/or at a good price. It strikes me that this indicates a crying
need for banding together to aggregate buying power.
There are quite a few precendents for such things:
- in the early days of electrification, rural communities often organized
their own electric coops to either build generators or generate enough
demand for commercial companies to enter their markets
- a number of the NSFnet regionals are essentially cooperatives that
aggregate user demand and then buy leased lines from existing carriers
(of course the regionals also have an operational role)
- its very common for cities and towns to band together to issue a common
RFP -- getting a better price and terms than they would individually (in
Mass., for example, all of the police cruisers are bought through a
single negotiated contract)
- there's a non-profit outfit in NY called TPN that is essentially a
long-distance reseller for non-profits -- they have volume contracts with
AT&T, MCI, etc., and any non-profit in the country can cut 10-20% off
their long-distance bills by signing up via TPN
- trade and professional organizations almost always offer a group
insurance program -- for example, the IEEE's (Institute of Electrical and
Electronic Engineers) medical insurance is about the best and cheapest
available to someone without an employer's program
Since we (The Center for Civic Networking) exist to serve the
needs of the civic networking community, I've been thinking that we might
put together a joint RFP for Internet service and then try to negotiate a
better deal than anyone might get individually. Since we're a
non-profit, and don't directly offer Internet services ourselves, we're
in a good position to act as a neutral broker. I also have some advisors
who've managed large coop purchases and who can help structure this beast.
So... If there are any FreeNets, public access Unix systems, civic
networks, libraries, schools, etc. who would like to be parties to such an
effort, please let me know. If there's enough interest, I see us
collaborating to write an RFP that meets the needs of participants, and
then putting it on the street to PSI, Alternet, ANS, Sprint, MCI, AT&T,
the regionals, etc. If there are any vendors who'd like to respond to such
an RFP - you can let me know too :). I also expect that we'd be eligible
for some of the upcoming Federal networking funds - as a way to defray
startup expenses and allow us to maintain a lower average price during
rampup.
Happy Holiday,
Miles Fidelman
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Miles R. Fidelman mfidelman@civicnet.org
Executive Director 91 Baldwin St. Charlestown MA 02129
The Center for Civic Networking 617-241-9205 fax: 617-241-5064
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