[9263] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: an Internet buying coop?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Rothman)
Mon Dec 27 13:43:22 1993
In-Reply-To: <9312271745.AA04628@spare-parts.crd.Ge.Com>
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 93 13:37:06 -0400
To: stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
From: "David Rothman" <rothman@netcom.com>
Reply-To: rothman@netcom.com
Me:
>> Why can't Netcom, Digex and the rest *work together* to come up with at
>> easy, *reliable* offline readers available at no extra cost?
>
You:
>To my mind, this is precisely the wrong place for providers to be
>spending their resources.
Have you seen PSILink's offline readers? They offer ftp and newsgroups,
much more than e-mail. As for material with images and sounds, the
offline technique could work with it too; not everyone cares about
online games and other real-time activities. Millions of 'Net users are
benefitting from mailing lists and newsgroups alone and think that
"telnet" is the name of a phone company. To sum up, the issue isn't just
the range of services. It's also ease of use and affordability. I, too,
am eager for the new services, but it'll be quite some time until
everyone can *afford* them. In theory I can ride an SST to Europe; that
doesn't mean I will in real life.
Meanwhile, with very, very little in the way of individual investments,
'Net providers could pool resources and take advantage of this window of
opportunity.
In fact, the coming of the new services makes it all the more essential
for providers to minimize investment in configurations geared for the
present services. Offline readers would be most helpful in this respect
by limiting demands on existing systems. Demand would still grow very
rapidly, but sitll not as fast as without offline readers.
Providers would save money, which would mean both more room for profit
for providers and *lower* costs for consumers--whose numbers would be
more numerous due to the smaller bills.
I know that some services on their own are working on offline readers,
but if they pooled resouces in this respect, they would have more money to
spend on other, newer services.
>The capability to deliver affordable IP bandwidth to the home/office is
>going to be here soon - some would argue it's here now, but most of the
>world has no idea how to use it. If the providers work together on
>anything, I think it should be standards/software/whatever to make IP
>plug&play ... to build on the Internet's unique strength instead of
>working to mimic CompuServe Information Manager.
I couldn't agree with you more on the need for providers to work
together in regard to the newer, better tech, too. But let's not neglect
the present.
As for CIM, hey, the issue isn't just the interface. It's the network.
The Internet offers more than any individual service; let's make it
easier and cheaper than today.
Speaking of commercial services, your company's GEnie has a warm spot in
my heart too. As much as anyone, however, folks at GE must be aware of
how much GEnie has suffered due to lack of a more modern interface
compared to CIS and the rest.
--David Rothman
>
>--
>Dick St.Peters
>GE Corporate R&D, Schenectady, NY stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com
>
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