Hi Guys not wanting to spoil the party here, but knowing the swiss association "biotope" quite well, it will definitely NOT be easy to make yourself even heard. some thinking points:
- there is ASUT: they are by far the biggest association of telco's and have a corresponding "weight" and voice in Berne. they can make things happen (and vice-versa: they can make things NOT happen). they will probably just laugh at a new association, consisting of mostly small providers, trying (or more: struggling) to get a voice in the big universe which is the politics in Berne - ICT associations are struggling since years to make themselves heard in Berne. simply put, ICT is lacking of a lobby in Berne. I personally don't think "just another association" is going to change things here - the biggest associations tried to merge a bit more than one year ago and it went competely wrong - because of political interests and some other reasons. - you WILL need manpower to run this business (association). FREE manpower. from my experience, people are always keen on FOUNDING an association, but when it comes to do some work, they magically disappear or appear to be soo busy. if you can't prove that you're worth being heard (by producing output), the "big ones" and the politicians will just not hear you. and they are the movers and shakers in Berne, always keep that in mind. I know it might not be fair and so on - but it's the reality. IMHO, you'd better think about the following options before founding the association. you might want to try those options out before, if they prove to be wrong or not bring you to your target, you can always found the association later on. - consider SWINOG - it IS a brand, so IMHO, you'd better transform SWINOG in such an ISP-single-point-of-contact association than founding a new one (marketing is key: all the people need to get to know you first, that costs effort and ressources) - talk to ASUT, nicely. if they let you group together a Fachgruppe or Arbeitgsruppe to work on said subject, that will lead to better results (politically-wise); papers produced in such a group have a much bigger chance to be heard IMO. - talk to other players / associations on this behalf, if ASUT is not of much help. just my 2 cents. not wanting to offend anyone, neither trying to get this great idea out of your heads. just playing "advocatus diaboli" here. don't shoot me. cheers Umbi > > Am 29.10.2010 um 12:08 schrieb Claudio Prezzi: > > > Hi all > > > > Why do you plan to build a new association if there are already so many > > associations in this industry? > > > > ICTSwitzerland.ch for example is the head association of the ICT > industry. > > Below it there are for example asut.ch, the "Swiss Telecommunications > > Association" and simsa.ch, the "Swiss Internet Industry Association". > Both > > associations already are involved in the political process of BÜPF and > have > > many members of our industry. Why not just build a new workgroup in one > of > > these associations especially for BÜPF issues? > > > > Just my opinion ;) > > > > > > Kind regards > > Claudio Prezzi > > > > COMsulting GmbH > > The IT or "Internet Industry" is not really the same as Internet Provider. > People who provide services to internet users have different issues than > people who provide the wires. A "YouTube" has to deal for example with > copyright issues on a totally different level as they are more in a > "responsible > situation" while a internet provider just transports content but is not > auditing or controlling the content and actually is not even allowed to look > at what contents go over his wire. So as you can see in this example, the > issues BÜPF would raise are totally different for those two example > companies. That means an organisation built out of YouTubes, Google's, > Facebooks > etc would not be able to understand or at least care less on the issues of > an underlying transport layer operator. > > As far as ASUT goes, it represents all the big guys. Ttheir approach is > also very different. While a Swisscom, Sunrise, Orange, Cable Com can afford > 100'000 € boxes to filter traffic just for the fun of it, many small > ISP's get killed by those costs. Small ISP's which might serve very specific > nice markets and create jobs in specific areas are not being heard. Swinog is > basically such an "organisation" where lots of ISP "geeks" are > participating but its not organized enough as a legal entity to represent the > ISP's. > > So my recommendation would be to either build something new (Pascal's > Idea) or make SwinOG a real organisation which represents the ISP's better. > _______________________________________________ swinog mailing list swinog@lists.swinog.ch http://lists.swinog.ch/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/swinog
