I thought there was a bandwidth shortage, until I read article, below:
eb-mag.com
Bandwidth is NOW a traded commodity!
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Internet spawns bandwidth exchanges
The world is awash in it. It's become a commodity market. Prices are plummeting.
DRAMs? Nope. We're talking bandwidth--more specifically, telephone line capacity--and it's becoming so plentiful that it's being traded on the Internet just like other commodities.
A panel at the Voice On the Net (VON) conference this fall in Washington, D.C., featured the founders of three Internet-based bandwidth exchanges that have emerged in the last year to allow open market trading of transmission capability. The conference was sponsored by pulver.com Inc., an Internet-based consulting firm located in Melville, NY.
These companies--Band-X Ltd., London; RateXchange Inc., San Francisco; and Arbinet Inc., New York--serve as virtual trading floors for the extra capacity of these lines. Transmission suppliers--such as AT&T, MCI and Sprint--post the circuits they have available at specific prices--for example a DS3 circuit from New York to Moscow at $43,000--and buyers such as other carriers, cable system operators, Internet service providers, resellers and even private corporations bid on the capacity. Although each service operates a little differently, in general the exchange helps to match sellers with suitable buyers and broker the deals. In the case of Band-X, it makes its revenue from commissions earned in helping to consummate the deal, according to Marcus de Ferranti, director of Band-X.
The growing competition in the telephone market and the resulting construction of new capacity by private companies has created a glut of capacity, according to Kevin Werbach, who chaired the panel. "Before, if you wanted bandwidth, there was only one place to go," says Werbach, managing editor of Release 1.0, a computer industry newsletter based in New York, and former counsel for new technology policy at the Federal Communications Commission.
At the same time, the Internet creates a way to share information about what capacity is available when and at what price. What's more, Internet-based telephony and data services have made it "increasingly easy to provision bandwidth in more flexible ways," notes Werbach. And the exchange idea is catching on. Werbach says at least two other groups are hoping to launch similar services.
For more information on these exchanges see their home pages:
band-x.com
ratexchange.com
arbinet.com |
