[9142] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: more on Internet buying coop
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (adam fast)
Sun Dec 19 04:50:53 1993
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 1993 01:48:04 -0800 (PST)
From: adam fast <adamfast@u.washington.edu>
Reply-To: adam fast <adamfast@u.washington.edu>
To: Miles R Fidelman <fidelman@civicnet.org>
Cc: com-priv@psi.com, communet@nysernet.org, nii_agenda@civicnet.org,
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.87.9312181755.A14111-0100000@world.std.com>
On Sat, 18 Dec 1993, Miles R Fidelman wrote:
> In short: I don't see this coop as an operational entity, rather as a
> contractual, negotiating, and possibly financing vehicle.
i agree that a cooperative association for negotiating and /financing/ is a
great idea!
however i'd like to make some comments about the economics of networking
and your .sig line, "cyberspace is civic space."
correct me if i am wrong, i believe what you are proposing is a consumer
cooperative to negotiate good deals with /existing/ Internet providers.
this is a first step, but it is by no means progressive.
as you mentioned, many cities buy hardware (police cars, etc) by
negotiating cooperatively. yet they all use this hardware /separately/,
in their own community organizations (local police departments, etc) to
provide /services./ they do not contract with a large, nationwide
security force (like Brinks or the FBI) to provide the service. why do
they do it themselves?
a couple of reasons. first and foremost, they need to /trust/ their
service providers. they want someone who lives in their town that they
can talk to if something goes wrong, and they want something their kids
can relate to (growing up to be a local peace officer, etc.). this kind
of thing is impossible with a large national organization, which has no
loyalty to any particular community.
second, the economics of the service provision say that it is more
economical to provide the service themselves. no large management
structure to pay for, very easy to provide new services when necessary,
change procedures, change personnel.
so when you say that cyberspace is civic space-- /community/ space-- you
are right on the mark! cities and towns and communities do not contract
out to get their streets and squares and sidewalks from giant nationwide
or international public-space combines. they design these spaces and build
these spaces and /maintain/ these spaces themselves.
ok, now about networks. the economics of networks-- Internet in
particular-- say that communities should own and operate their own
networks. the cost of the equipment is very low, in money (don't you
love how the price of transistors drops every year?) and in skill
required to use the technology. /kids/ can run internetworks, high school
kids-- from pulling wires to maintaining DNS servers and routers to
designing the network. i work with a school district in washington state
(issaquah s.d.) where every classroom in the district (12 schools) has a
phone that dials out and also has a PC or Mac connected by Ethernet to
the Internet. /Every classroom in the district./
installed by kids, run by kids. between schools they run voice and data
on the same line (using T1s). so you don't need a vast corporate
organization to do it for you.
TLG and RAINet have provided flexible and reliable internet service for
years using the cooperative model-- while people have tried to drag
BARRnet and NWNet kicking and screaming into making other models of access
available, with little success. just thinking about existing services
isn't enough if the providers aren't willing to provide it, or if the
services your community needs don't already exist...
secondly, and very importantly, the economics of internet say that
communication is cheap if you own your own wires. and wires are easy to
lay, especially inside buildings-- 10baseT ethernet goes on normal phone
wires you can get at radio shack. no need to pay the phone company inside
your building...
so if you ethernet whole buildings, you can run one high bandwidth line
into the building, that everyone can /share./ and save a lot of money.
groups of buildings in a neighborhood can organize cooperatively to share
access... groups of neighborhoods can share access...
the /existing/ Internet providers are not set up to do this, tho. they
want to sell individual lines to people in the same building. they don't
allow people to sell to people who also resell... they also don't have
the customer support structure in place to help people in their homes, in
their kitchens, with their internet. which is what people need at the
present time...
one way of looking at the future is looking at Internet the same way that
people look at housing. we all own the interconnecting streets together
(cooperatively) and people have the choice of owning their local network
(housing) themselves, contracting to a company to provide it to them
individually, or more likely and much cheaper, locate in a building that
has internet. (and the building is either part of a cooperative or
contracts with a small internet provider to run the service in that
building). this follows the model of water and electricity-- which is what
communications should be like, an essential human need in our society.
and it also follows the economics of Internet. call your local Internet
plumber.
to grow the Internet, we need lots of local Internet providers. the
question is, how to help them grow?
in solidarity,
adam
Adam Feuer
member and board president,
Seattle Peoples' Internet Cooperative (spi.net)
Seattle WA USA
adamfast@u.washington.edu
