[9288] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: press references to NSF getting out of intnet funding
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ronda Hauben)
Mon Dec 27 22:37:21 1993
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 93 21:36:55 CST
From: rhauben@heartland.bradley.edu (Ronda Hauben)
To: ped@panix.com, com-priv@psi.com
Reply-To: rhauben@heartland.bradley.edu
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>On Mon, 27 Dec 1993, Gordon Cook wrote:
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>> I have the two references I cited in com-priv about 10 days ago on NSF
>> getting out of the internet subsidy business..... one from Tony
>> Rutkowski and the other from Philip Elmer Dewit of Time. The Chronicle
>> of Higher Ed has said much the same thing. I think this has been
>> repeated quite widely in the general press. if anyone has further references to
>> this promised activity on the part of NSF, I'd like to see them. Either
>> here on the list or privately. Thanks for any help that anyone can offer.
>>
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>My information was that they were trying to get out of the business of
>subsidizing the backbone, and wanted instead to subsidize schools,
>libraries, hospitals and the like to help them get on the net. I hasten to
>add that my sources were not from within NSF.
>Phil Elmer-DeWitt
>
But in a summary of an early meeting held in March 1990 at Harvard
proposing to commercialize and privatize the NSF backbone, Steve
Wolff is referred to as saying that it is much less expensive
to be subsidizing the backbone than to be subsidizing individual
faculty people - choosing who to subsidize, etc.
Thus it seems that there is an awareness that the reason
for the NSF to stop subsidizing the backbone directly (they
will still they claim subsidize individuals and still have
to pay maybe even more for less ) is not to save the U.S.
govt money or to expand access among the academic world -
but somehow to help commercial entities (which is not
as far as it seemed in the past the obligation of the NSF).
Ronda
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