SBC/AT&T + Verizon/MCI Peering Restrictions

Wed Nov 2 22:33:34 UTC 2005

> 
> There is one scenario where the content.provider is
> paying the carrier as well - when the content.provider
> is a direct customer of the carrier, rather than being
> either a SFI-peer or a customer of an SFI-peer.
> 
> This of course goes back to the question of
> depeering/transit/etc which we beat to death a couple
> of weeks ago - many carriers want to get paid both by
> the sources and sinks of traffic (it's certainly an
> understandable, if unlikely, desire).  I would just
> like to point out for the record that none of the
> recent depeering battles have involved any RBOCs...
> 

Playing devil's advocate here...

But what if (assuming a new generation of peering agreements came into 
being)...

They allowed SELECTIVE depeering... say... by Customer?

So SBC could depeer Google...

(assume here the SBC wants Google to become a customer and isn't 
actually competing with Google as an SE guy).

And assume that the FCC/Courts will take a few years to deal with the issue.

I think it might be able to happen. What would a Google do? Anywhere it 
moves its bits, SBC would just drop them/ignore them. SBC is running a 
private network with some interconnections as far as SBC is concerned, 
and barring any wild lawsuits from customers and assuming an amendment 
to its TOS... You could selectively depeer BIG guys... that aren't SO 
big that your customers will mass defect..

So maybe Google isn't the right example. Maybe real.com is a better one. 
Would you lose many customers if real.com wasn't available to them? I 
bet not. But would real be willing to pay you $4K a month to keep access 
to your network??? probably.

Just a thought.

Deepak