Thomas, any response to a critique of your post on the Last Mile thread? regards, djane
Talk : Communications : 'LAST MILE' TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here
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To: gdichaz (4708 )
From: Frank A. Coluccio
Saturday, Jul 17 1999 8:39PM ET
Reply # of 4744
Hi Chaz,
You may recall that I referenced ISLD recently on another
thread.. I think it was the Gorilla thread in the context of
Telstra's alternatives for settlement deals (maybe not), in any
event, I've followed them for some time.
Many of Mr. Zoran's assertions (do you think he's long
ISLD? smile) in your thread point in the right direction,
largely accurate and right on target concerning what ISLD is
all about.
But some of his subjectivisms, which I'm sure are well
intentioned, may be a little skewed. For clarification, I'll point
out a few corrections throughout this post. A brief example:
GBLX dominates inter-continental traffic? They have a
single cable pumping bits in the water at this time, with
maybe two or three now going into implementation stage.
Maybe in five years time they may become a primary
contender for dominance, but not now. And with the other
deals being cut today for transoceanic crossings by LVLT,
WFI, Gemini, etc., I dare say that declaring GBLX anything
but a contender at this time amounts to stretching.
I think that ISLD's model already is and will continue to be
imitated many times over, indeed it is being duplicated now
as we speak, particularly in the international sector, as the
world's ISPs seek better treatment on backbone route
settlement schemes and payment schedules.
Right now, despite any inroads that may have been made by
ISLD and a few other plays who cater mostly to a select list
of larger end-org customers, there are still some gross
inequities (at least as perceived by the World's ISPs and
backbone providers) that need attention.
Consider the ISPs in Southeast Asia, as an example. These
providers are still paying through the nose in almost every
instance, because they must still hit 60 Hudson Street in NY
City, or Los Angeles, at the gateways, and then onto the
two MAEs (MAE-West in California and MAE-East in
Virginia), or wherever stateside, here, in order to merely get
across their own country, or across borders, within their
own region of the world.
The reasons for this aren't all obvious ones. As the ISLD
model picks up momentum by other SPs, this situation
should be mitigated somewhat, but there are more things that
have to be done in other areas. Root servers and other DNS
structures need to be changed, which require Internet
governance approvals. And this means now having to deal
with the PTTs, who are under the stewardship of the ITU,
which despite their new interworkings with the IETF... ah,
this is for another post, but I think you see where it goes.
These anomalies will be facilitated in part as the pipes in the
oceans begin to open up to the 'net - as has already
occurred, in part - by ISLD and some of the others who
Mr. Zoran has mentioned. I don't know exactly who actually
came first, in terms of bypassing the established NAPs. I'm
not one for legends in the making here, so it's not really that
important to me to say who was first, but this general trend
was started about three years ago in earnest, and will
accelerate as time proceeds.
You may recall that Genuity, Digex, and Concentric, along
with several USA domestics, opened what they salubriously
termed private network access and peering points, or
P-NAPs, a while back. After only a few short years some of
those earlier schemes could now be viewed as rather quaint.
They adopted the same principles used by the current ISLD
model in the continental 48 at about the same time that ISLD
was getting their act into swing.
Some of the domestics were eaten up by others in the food
chain, and some others diffused these fabrics into their
mainstream offerings, leaving these ISLD-like attributes
behind or blending them into the background of their larger
business models.
Which is what I suspect will happen with ISLD and others,
too, unless they have some unyielding philosophical
convictions, as more SPs begin to crowd their field, causing
them, like everyone else, to seek additional means of
differentiating themselves.
But there are some very clear distinctions between ISLD,
ABOV and EXDS that should be pointed out. We've
already covered ISLD's role both here and in Mr. Zonan's
post. ISLD does the things that were noted, and yes they
will service the types of customers that were noted.
ABOV, on the other hand (who *does* have some of their
own fiber and IRU backbone, btw, contrary to the poster's
assertions, albeit much of it is also leased just like ISLD's is
for the most part, therefore I don't see why it was even
brought up) will not compete with their own customers who
are ISPs, other forms of SPs, and content providers.
In other words, ABOV, up until this point in time has
remained a kind of ISP's backbone colocation and peering
agent facilitating the hand offs and peering of routes, and
other facilities management services that ISLD performs. It
is like a carriers' carrier to the ISP and content provider
world, and refuses to deal with the end user organizations
(the CSCOs, Mastercards, etc.) directly, or individual
residential and small business (SOHO) end users, directly.
ABOV has stated that they are committed to this model, but
just like I suspect that ISLD's model must change with shifts,
so, too, I think that ABOV's must, lest they subject them-
selves to an endurance test with what they have in place
now.
EXDS, on the other hand is a combination of both, and then
some. And GBLX does not at the present dominate
inter-continental traffic.
I don't want to digress too much, although I think I will visit
this issue some other time on the ISLD thread. Thanks for
bringing it up here, tho, and highlighting the existence of the
other thread.
Regards, Frank Coluccio |
