> From: Nicholas Staff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: The relevancy of the internet over SMTP
Not only over SMTP. For 9 years my access was over dial-up UUCP. > I realize that only about 15% of the world has Internet access and that very > few of those people have a fiber local loop but even so, what benefits do > you see being realized from having the ability to access The Internet via > email considering the current and proposed infrastructures? Comcast is an ISP in USA. Don't assume that everybody everywhere has same income and same options as you have. For example, my phone is still connected via ancient mechanical-coordinate (analog) phone station of the state phone company. 14400 bit/s dial-up connection via it is not very stable (often disconnects even during short UUCP sessions), faster - really unstable. The UUCP user software automatically redials and resumes transmission from the breakpoint, not from the beginning - big advantage in comparison with POP3/SMTP over PPP. Average monetary income here is about US $40/month (sic), it's for all - food, rent, clothes, medicines, taxes etc., far not only for Internet access. Computers are as expensive as in USA. Imagine living on $40/month. Then you'll take numbers below more seriously. Besides monthly flat fee, the state phone company requires also pay by second of talks and dial-up sessions $0.43/hour (soon the rate will double), it's in addition to ISP fee. Cheapest night (8PM-8AM) +weekends call-back (ISP calls the user in order for user to avoid paying to the phone company by minute for all time of dial-up sessions) is $22/month, works with far not every phone station (I didn't try mine). Private phone companies are far more expensive. I paid flat fee $3.28/month to my previous ISP for unlimited UUCP (dial-up email-only) access, plus to the phone company by second for dial-up sessions time (minimal possible thanks UUCP advantages). Now I'm paying $32/month for DSL with download speed limited to 160 Kbit/s (including PPPoE and LLC incapsulations), upload speed limited to 64 Kbit/s, traffic (max of incoming and outgoing) crossing my country border limited to 1200 MB/month (more is $0.048/MB). The phone station was equipped by DSL (one ISP only) only this year. "Almost-cable" (cable to the apartment complex, twisted wire Ethernet inside it, nominally 64 Kbit/s, really slower because outside connection of the ISP is overloaded) is $40/month. GPRS (via cellphone) traffic is prohibitively expensive ($2.12/MB). No other economically feasible options in the apartment complex I live in. I'm living in the state capital, my situation is typical. Worse in most other regions of CIS. Another sizable category of email-only users in CIS - those who use computers at work for private access. Employers have to pay to ISP for traffic, very expensive (for example $70/GB), so they don't give online access to emloyees for surfing, but give email-only access usually for free. > It just seems > to me like a solution for a very different internet Very different income/fees ratio. > and that in the coming > days there will seldom be a person who is email enabled that doesn't also > have essentially unrestricted and unlimited internet access as well. Will you continue to say for everybody and assume that world ends at USA border? Lena http://lena.kiev.ua/mail2ftp/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To contribute to the discussion, email to accmail@listserv.aol.com To unsubscribe, email to the *admin* address [EMAIL PROTECTED] with UNSUBSCRIBE ACCMAIL as the message body. To get the latest version of the ACCMAIL FAQ, send a blank email to accmail.faq.en `AT` szs.net (replacing `AT` with @ to form a proper email address). ----------------------------------------------------------------------
