[Air-l] Re: overcharging internet

[Bram Dov Abramson]

adrian.miles at uib.no:
> >So lesson is clear files from browsers and force a cold boot from
> >public/commercial terminals when you are finished using.
>
>sorry. the lesson is to realise that the rest of the world subsidises
>US access costs to the internet (due to inequities in how costs are
>charged via the ITU)

No, they don't.

I think you're referring to a version -- in these parts they call the game 
"broken telephone" -- of an accusation made several years back by 
executives of monopoly telcos in several countries.

Routed through APEC, their claim was that international Internet charging 
was unequitable because it did *not* follow the ITU-coordinated regime for 
international telephone charging, where each pair of international 
correspondents measures how much traffic they exchange over the course of 
the year, then settle up for the difference.  Instead, argued said telco 
executives, they had to purchase capacity to the U.S. by negotiating on a 
case-by-case basis with suppliers -- which meant acting as customers -- 
even though said suppliers then had "free" access to their customers' 
networks through these links, including the overseas customers.  Instead, 
went the argument, Internet traffic traversing international links should 
be metered, and pricing set according to actual traffic usage.  In this 
sense, the chief complaint was not with the old ITU settlements system, but 
indeed the opposite -- it was with the Internet for not mimicking the 
monopoly-based settlements system.  (More background at 
http://www.teledotcom.com/article/TEL20000822S0037).

The argument has been wending its way through diplomatic channels for a few 
years now, and did make into the ITU.  The problem is that, even when it 
was being pushed very actively, a great many folks viewed it as a spurious 
argument being used for attempted commercial gain.  For evidence, they 
pointed to the fact that, were these carriers truly concerned about the 
situation, regional cooperation and coordination would address the problem, 
but that no such cooperation had been even attempted.

Today, the Internet's centre is a bit more diffuse -- indeed, it's ironic 
that the specific example cited is Amsterdam, one of the Internet's hub 
cities.  That means that, if one wishes to talk of "subsidisation", I think 
it would be more accurate to say simply that, in connecting to the global 
Internet, places with thin connections are at a commercial disadvantage 
(higher prices) to places with thick connections.

cheers
Bram