On Wed, May 08, 2013 at 04:58:05PM -0400, Seth Gordon wrote: > The Right Way to run the telecom system, IMHO, would be to “delaminate” it > (h/t David Weinberger). Have the ILECs be responsible for maintaining the > network infrastructure that shuttles bits from place to place, and let them > rent out that bandwidth to service providers, but forbid them from actually > providing any of those services themselves. Service providers then rent out > that bandwidth, build services on top of it (Internet access, Web hosting, > or what consumers think of as “the phone company”) and then sell the > services to consumers. > > Of course, in the current political environment, such a regulatory system > doesn’t have a snowball’s chance of passing, because nobody wants to be > holding the bag running a public utility that sells a commodity service, > and everyone wants the chance to sell high-margin services to consumers and > then make those margins even higher by taking advantages of monopoly.
I think Geoff Huston's talk at NANOG53 captures pretty well why this doesn't work, and can even be dangerous: http://www.nanog.org/meetings/abstract?id=1853 The talk is about IPv4 exhaustion and IPv6 transition, but at timestamps 10:20, 15:40, and 18:20 he talks about the business aspects of providing last-mile access. _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss