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From: Terry Lambert <terry@cs.weber.edu>
Subject: Re: X on dial-in
Organization: Utah Valley State College, Orem, Utah
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 1995 18:50:12 GMT
Message-ID: <D3C4Bp.I46@park.uvsc.edu>
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fgoldstein@bbn.com (Fred R. Goldstein) wrote:
] Many US telcos charge cents/minute for local ISDN data calls but not for voice
] calls. Thus a modem is cheaper, bit for bit. Especially for residential
] users; business is more often charged for all calls. BUT if your ISDN gear
] supports "data over speech bearer service" (DOSBS), then you can make "speech"
] calls over the ISDN line and pass data at 56 kbps! It works just fine on
] almost all LOCAL and intra-LATA calls, but not on most inter-LATA calls.
This is 60 * 24 * 30 = 432.00 per penny per minute per month.
Even demand-dial, finding yourself on a fairly active mailing list
can do this to you.
Not making quota? Send email to all your subscribers announcing
"great deals" and throwing up their virtual circuit for a sufficient
amout of time.
I find it morally objectionable the people are expected to pay for
incoming data -- especially potentially unsolicited data.
Sure if I were a PC weenie, I'd have a provider (who I'd pay money
instead of paying the telco money) to act as my mail drop, since
DOS and associated MS "operating systems" are simply too stupid to
be capable of doing if for me.
There are many admirable traits associated with nomadic computing.
Paying an internet provider for my lack of real software is not one
of them, even if the alternative is paying the telco for the
opportunity to receive junk mail.
] California, alas, got around this; they charge residential ISDN users for
] daytime speech calls that are free on analog lines. But then California is
] usually screwy! :-)
California had service providers, other states got service providers
(many, like netcom, the same ones as in California).
California had ISDN, other states are getting ISDN.
So goes information technology in California, so goes it everywhere.
Don't fool yourself into beliveing that daytime speech calls are not
going to be metered elsewhere as well.
] Also, you don't leave the line up 24 hours a day! For that a leased line or
] FR makes more sense. But for part-time netsurfer, it's great! (I use it.)
Then you don't need a line. Use a 28.8 modem instead.
] >US West can't endpoint you on the internet because they are
] >classifying Internet connectivity as long distance.
]
] Hockey puck. They can endpoint you at an internet service provider. They
] just can't be the interstate provider.
I don't *want* to be endpointed at yet another middleman who wants
his pound of flesh.
Ideally, I want to be enpointed into a Frame Relay cloud, and as
part of the flat rate, pay my fractional share of the T3 from the
cloud to the Internet backbone. Currently, I have to pay for a full
virtual circuit; either an ISDN line, or a Frame Relay cloud-of-one,
where I have to pay the freight to both endpoints (mine and the
providers). This is bogus.
US West *can't* provide this service because making the T3->Internet
connection means that they would be a common carrier for my traffic,
which might go interstate. Any time you cross a tarrif boundry,
someone new makes money.
Yes, they can hook me up to some weenie with a Cisco box who charges
half of what he's paying Sprint for his T1 just to give me a 56k
(that's the going rate for a 56k in this area, and having checked
out most of the western US, this is not an uncommon case). You want
a T1? Pay Sprint yourself instead of insterting yet another router
hop and portential point of failure, and it will cost you about what
you'd pay for 2 56k's to your current provider.
Why do you think people are scrambling to be providers? It's because
there's lots of money in it for the short term.
Let's take Netcom as an example (not to single them out, just that
they are representative of the well established providers in the
bay area).
The Netcom site I looked at had 3300 entries in its password file.
Assume 10% of these were freebies and system accounts and employee
accounts.
The bare *minimum* you can pay Netcom for an account with limited
email and news groups, no PPP or SLIP, is $17.50/month.
This means they are making, at a minimum, approximately
$17.50/account/month * 12 months * 3000 accounts
Or $630,000 a year gross.
Per access point.
Per provider. CRL is also in the area (there are 6 major providers
in the bay area, all charging the same rates), with ~3300 entries
in their user database as well.
It's safe to say that providing Internet access in the SF Bay area
is an over $4,000,000/year business per set of provider/access
points.
These major providers have more than one access point each.
This is a lot of money.
I think eventually economies of scale will kick in -- people
reading this message and scrambling to establish themselves as
providers, "$" shining in their cartoon eyes, will probably help.
And we will be left with the people selling us wires trying to
charge for the bits being pushed across those wires.
And then, the fighting starts, between the users, who want a
superhighway, and the wire sellers, who want a superturnpike
(a turnpike is a private toll road, for those of you who have
never been to the eastern US).
I guess if all attempts at reasonability fail, we can nationalize
them, just like the highway system was nationalized.
Hopefully, this won't be necessary; I can pretty much guarantee
you that on a nationalized system will include other undesirable
crap, like cryptographic "speed limits", and a "Highway Patrol"
you will not want to meet.
My opinion,
Terry Lambert
terry@cs.weber.edu
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.