Sprint peering policy

Sun Jun 30 12:19:20 UTC 2002

> when this situation has existed in other industries, gov't intervention
> has always resulted.  even when the scope is international.  i've not
> been able to puzzle out the reason why the world's gov'ts have not
> stepped in with some basic interconnection requirements for IP carriers.

Some governments have stepped in, unfortunately the ACCC (the government
body in Australia charged with preventing monopolies), while forcing
the vehemently anti-peering Telstra to peer with a very small group of
other providers (Optus, who have been purchased by the normally pro-peering
SingTel who then have not peered the Optus network with their own network,
preventing it becoming available to SingTel's Australian peers; and
OzEmail, who were purchased by WorldCom as uu.net were not of sufficient
size in Australia to justify a peering mandate, so rather than pay for
traffic they paid $0.5billion to buy an ISP who already had peering),
have failed to force this peering to happen on terms which would make it
easy for other companies to join the situation.

Rather, should a new company wish to join the peering, they would have to
(after applying directly to peer with each company, having it rejected,
and going to the ACCC indicating this rejection is believed to be a form
of anti-competitive behaviour given the equitable nature of traffic
between the two networks, etc) establish an individual direct link in
most states to each ISP who is currently part of this peering.  If the
peering were happening at IXs/exchanges of some sort the cost of entry
would be a lot lower and at least two to three more companies would
most likely have approached the ACCC to participate in this peering
by now.  It still would require a full national network to reach each
peering exchange but at least it would put an upper bound on the cost
of joining the "Australian tier-1 peering" (or however you want to label
it).

David.