Tony, Your comment reminds me of an allied, but separate matter. In a recent ITU report on internet development, one of the largely implicit assumptions was the supposition that the internet pricing model is largely parasitic on historic telco investment and spare capacity -despite the technical advances in multiplexer technology, fibre, and the investment being made in new dedicated internet capacity. Consequently, given the ITU's successful transition from telegraph to telephones, one assumes that they are confidently predicting more of the same, i.e that when ISPs grow up they will act like telcos under the benevolent supervision of their political masters. If it is, the regulatory bodies for delivery will still be national sovereignties and the providers of that capacity will have the same legal responsibilities as current national telcos, whether theoretically deregulated or not. Whether you call them telcos, ISPs, revolutionary guards or visionary businessmen makes no difference. Although this is neither the technological model of global openness, nor the US model of state non-interference, it does seem a quite confident supposition. One perhaps should look at the ICANN formation process to see how the egalitarian and educational benefits of openness are replaced by perceptions that denial of service to others is at least a necessary if not sufficient step towards personal enrichment. This is of course a least worse rather than optimal scenario adopted by commerce.. The liberal free-traders may be right concerning those benefits, but they are surely as wrong as ever about human nature. Grateful if you have any comments concerning these naive conclusions. "A.M. Rutkowski" wrote: > There appears to be more to Bill Shrader's > statement about the ITU than meets the eye. > > The loudest and strongest statement of all on > the ITU appears actually to have been sent by > the ISP industry. It was heard through the > grapevine that they decided to boycott the ITU's > Telecom'99 Tradeshow - and in apparent retribution, > the ITU Forum'99 people failed to include a single > ISP person on its speaking agenda. About the only > exceptions were those companies that market to > telcos, or are themselves telcos. > > Check it out yourself at http://www.itu.ch/ > > This is worth some major trade publication > reporting.
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