routing around Sprint's depeering damage

Sun Nov 2 14:24:02 UTC 2008

I'll make one comment before 'Alex the Hammer' closes this discussion for straying into politics. 

Clearly regulating the incumbents to unbundle local loops has worked very well in some European countries (France and possibly others). Clearly US financial deregulation has cost the world dearly. 

So regulation is the appropriate response in some cases (I hope that is clear given the world financial system almost went under a few weeks ago).

However, it is not clear what a well crafted peering regulation would do that is different than what the market has achieved already. 

Sensible and hence pragmatic government mandated peering would require companies having equal bilateral traffic flows to peer or buy transit from each other. That would not necessarily preclude the current peering dispute. 

Forcing companies to peer when it is not in their interest is unlikely to be supported by the courts in any country, even the French and German courts.  

Sooner or later these two companies in conflict will either return to peering or one of them will buy transit to reach the other. 

It is a short term issue that probably doesn't merit government intervention 

Regards,

Roderick S. Beck
Director of European Sales
Hibernia Atlantic
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