Provider credibility - does it matter? was Re: Inter-provider relations

Fri Oct 25 18:15:44 UTC 1996

On Fri, 25 Oct 1996, Michael Dillon wrote:

> > There is a name for this ridiculous style of argument, but I don't 
> > remember it ...
> 
> Xenophobia. Look it up.

Ah, yes, that's it ;-)

> > Europe heavily subsidizes the US Internet.  It's not just VBCnet: the 
> > European Internet community pays something like 90% of the costs of 
> > traffic between Europe and North America.  The same applies to the
> > rest of the world.
> 
> I would say that if transatlantic lines are mostly ordered and paid for by
> European companies that you are probably correct. But part of the reason
> is that European government run PTT's charge horrendously high rates for
> international circuits.

European ISPs routinely put in (very expensive) lines to other European
countries and the USA.  We have a line to California, and are just now 
putting in circuits to Stockholm, Amsterdam, and Virginia.  This is just 
normal; we peer with two German networks and one Dutch network in London,
where they have run lines over to the UK.

On the other hand I have not seen any US regional ISP put in a line to 
Europe.  The few US ISPs (Sprint, UUnet, PSI) that do have lines to Europe 
use them to sell bandwidth to the States.

> Remember when Europe's economy was subsidized heavily by its colonies?
> The Internet is a similar colonial economy and it can't last forever.

Precisely.

--
Jim Dixon              VBCnet GB Ltd +44 117 929 1316  fax +44 117 927 2015
http://www.uk.vbc.net  VBCnet West   +1  408 971 2682  fax +1  408 971 2684