[9452] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
MCI's Dog & Pony Show
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brock N. Meeks)
Thu Jan 6 06:57:49 1994
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 1994 03:57:25 -0800
From: "Brock N. Meeks" <brock@well.sf.ca.us>
To: com-priv@psi.com
Someone posed an open question about the new "networkMCI"
commercials that are airing, which include references to the
"information superhighway."
The real news in MCI's announcement of "networkMCI" was that they
are challenging the local telephone companies on their own
footing. It won't happen overnight and MCI will spend hundreds of
millions in legal fees...
But wrapped in with this announcement, MCI tried to blow smoke up
the ass of anyone that would listen with it's "news" of what it was
doing on the information highway. The amount of BS being slung
by MCI surprised me, and I cover this company as part of my beat.
>From MCI's own press release:
Today the company announced, as an initial element of the
networkMCI vision, the inauguration of the nation's first
transcontinental information superhighway. Often talked
about as a key ingredient to keeping America competitive in
tomorrow's world economy, the MCI superhighway's roadbed uses
SONET fiber optic technology at speeds 15 times faster than
any SONET network available today.
MCI said that the National Science Foundation Network
(NSFNET) is the first user of its New York to Los Angeles
SONET fiber system. The NSFNET Backbone Service is the
fastest and most powerful of the university, government and
commercial networks known collectively as the Internet.
"Some people may be surprised to learn that MCI developed
these intercity links for the Internet six years ago," said
Roberts. "The NSFNET service today reaches nearly 15,000
networks around the world that participate in the Internet."
... SONET will be available throughout MCI's domestic network
by the end of 1994 and on international routes across the
Atlantic and the Pacific by 1995. The company said it will
further increase carrying speeds on existing fiber from 2.5
gigabits (billion bits) per second to more than 10 gigabits
per second by 1995.
MCI tried very hard during the press conference to make it sound
like they had a network that could actually deliver 2.5 Gbps second
throughput. They played up their connection with NSFNET, which
we're all well aware of here.
Fact is, MCI is well behind Sprint and AT&T in deploying SONET in
their network. And as we all know, it doesn't mean a damn thing
how fast the pipes are, it all depends on how fast you can switch
the data into and out of that fast moving stream.
At one point during the news conference, a reporter from _The
Washington Post_ asked: "Well, how does one get on NSFNet and how
much does it cost and how fast does it go?" MCI's Roberts fumbled
around trying to answer by explaining the concept in the primary
colors of the "household buzzword, the Internet."
The reporter didn't get it. "Well, tell me then, now much is NSF
paying for this 'transcontinental highway'" she asked.
"I don't know exactly, but I can tell you they are getting one heck
of a deal," Roberts said.
Brock Meeks
reporter
Communications Daily
