[9179] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
ATM, AT&T & Brock's Post
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Joseph Stroup)
Mon Dec 20 14:52:12 1993
From: joseph@path.net (Joseph Stroup)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 1993 11:49:55 PST
To: com-priv@psi.com
Cc: cook@path.net, brock@well.sf.ca.us
I think Gordon started off by asking the questions. Anyway Brock says that a
contract can be protested and the grant cannot. Not quite true. As we all
know AT&T has alot of money and plenty of time. If AT&T wanted to they could
by-pass an award protest CONTRACT or GRANT and go directly into Federal Court.
Brock says that less than 3 percent of contracts protested are actually allowed
to go on and the protest found to be invalid. Brock, please forgive me if I
don't quote you exactly but, the basic thing you are saying is that after a
protest, 3 percent of the contracts are then given to the first winner. That
is not true. The rate is more like 97 percent in favor of the gov't , that
the protest will in fact be denied. Most people fail to understand that the
IG works for the "Best Interest" of the United States Government as well as
the rules of the law. However, the FAR rules are subject to a wide range of
opinions. It would be nice to see a standard but, it will never happen. Anyway
, off the contract law issue.
AT&T does not have a working ATM situation ? I beg to differ with you. They
have a model for oversea's and a model for North America. The 2000 series
ATM switches are in place in Europe, North America, and Japan. One of the
AT&T customers is a large cable company, another its own internal/businees
unit AT&T mail and others. Also the European customers are PTT's. How can
you say that they are not up to speed? These switches work. I speak from
first hand knowledge - Seeing , touching, feeling. And they give their test
results out upon request.
Now to flip back to the GRANT vs the CONTRACT issue. My opinion only - The
only reason that the current backbone is up to where its supposed to be is
because. Yes, because. Its that contract/grant time again. Have to polish
up our act and get it together. Who knows what the bidders offered NSF ?
None of us were there during these deals except the players involved in
the sol. Ittai, is correct in saying speed/ packets pushed through are
two different issues. He points out that there has been an increase in the
amount of traffic that is tracked and they see a growth pattern. I maintain
that the contract/grant as I read it called for this to happen along time
ago. It was not to be a situation where as the demand increases so did the
network performance. If that were the case , a customer should have requested
that the T-3 network/ work at its designed spec's long ago. Now ANS is NOT the
only company that plays this game, Rockwell, AT&T, Martin, Boeing etc. Many
people involved in gov't business do this daily. Brock, you also mentioned
AT&T used the protest section to hold things up. I am sure that they did. But,
the gov't wrote the rules. AT&T was only doing what they had a legal right to
do. If the gov't does not like the rules - then they, not us, need to change
them.
Most of us here on the net are going to talk about things and never take any
action. Thats fine. I would say - What profit is there in taking ANS & NSF
into Federal Court over this AGREEMENT. Let the market place do its thing and
in time most of this will go away.
In the case of AT&T, they are the largest and can get away with alot. Many of
us have paid $$$ for their services, money that has made them what they are.
Maybe that is why they are still regulated.
Joseph Stroup
