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To: Raymond Duray who wrote (11463)	6/18/2001 2:57:43 PM
From: geoffrey Wren	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

About those parasites. Is there a market toll mechanism that can or does make users pay in some proportion to their use of the system? Otherwise, the internet will always be slow. I would suppose the only effective method would be to charge the local user of bandwidth, since the sender could be from another country. We could tax the user, and then have offsetting tax credits to those whose servers serve the internet. Admittedly, after it started, the government would probably want to make money on the internet, but maybe that is a risk necessary to take. I'm always getting more and more SPAM on my Hotmail account (really need to just get a new address I suppose), and I notice the SPAM messages contain more and more data content (pictures, graphics, java applets)

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (11463)	6/18/2001 7:49:42 PM
From: Crossy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

Ray, pardon me to jump in here (after having lurked regularlyin the past) but this message of yours caught my attention.. "One of the largest bit-burners the universe has ever seen is Napster. Where's the profit? None to be seen. This service is parasitic upon not only the recording industry, but on the pipeline services of the SPs, be they ISPs or PSTN carriers. There's a word of difference between a Napster bit and tolled voice minute on a 10 10 xxx service. The latter is paying for itself, the former is a net drain on SP EBITDA" Why do you think that a "bandwidth hog" application is "parasitic" on the resources of the SP ? If I subscribe to an unmetered service then this is the problem of the SP. Now I don't think that all ISPs pay their backbone provider according to traffic routed but rather a lump sum and the maximum bandwidth per time unit is fixed. In such an environment the SP has a 2 fixed components: cost and revenue and bandwidth upgrades on the part of the SP are "incrementally fixed" in so far as for every increase in bandiwdth of the SPs backbone link his fixed costs are increasing. I won't call it unfair for users to take advantage of such an opportunity (on financial markets we call this arbitrage) If an SP has fixed revenue but variable cost elements to support them then he's going the sure way of a distressed company. As I'm writing being based in Europe (Austria) I am using a cablemodem. It's an unmetered service and costs around $40 per month for 300/64kbit/sec. My provider Chello is a subsidiary of UPCOJ (UCOMA subsidiary in turn) - where Liberty Media is going to take a big stake soon.. I really question the argument favoring metered service. Especially to incumbents with huge backbone infrastructure (the historic type of European PTTs) this provides a constant WINDFALL as bandwidth increases - automatically without any effort on behalf of the SP to improve customer service or service value (price/performance). I can remember my own bills years ago when my PTT charged me $500 a month because I had an info centric lifestyle early on. MAybe this explains the "Incumbent culture" to some extent - their well being was virtually ensured WITHOUT ANY EFFORT. The only counterbalance to this "culture" IMHO is the transformation of communication services into an industry governed by "Moore's law". Look at Intel or AMD both are thriving. Alternative unmetered providers are one route to tilt the pendulum. On a related matter I recently tried to get up to shape with xDSL matters. When I read the respective book (ADSL and DSL by Walt Goralski) I suddenly became englightened why now (after a long period of inaction by the PTTs and ILECs) xDSL finally obtained their necessary blessing: because without the xDSL that in fact bypasses the CO class5 circuit switches, the data-traffic would block the "precious" switches in the CO - a phenomenon on the rise in the late 90ies (not only in California also in my country). So the bellheads finally had to face the music and had a REAL INCENTIVE to block a micro step towards the future not any longer. Isn't it eye-opening that an entrenched position in a timid near-monopoly industry makes a player (the ILECs) predisposed to stem against the tide at all cost for fears of cannibalization of formerly high revenue streams of previously "overcharged" customer groups (like T1 business customers) best regards CROSSY