There is the larger problem of anti-trust issues. Those large providers collectively represent more than 60% of the market. I believe that this is the real basis of the concern. Such an arrangement could be construed as being anti-competitive. Were IBM to make such an arrangement with IBM and AT&T then DOJ might become very active. The same holds true here. Companies holding such large market-share control cannot quite do things the way that they want because we (collectively) have made laws that have deemed such activities as public-policy effecting activities and subject to some regulation, by public bodies. I don't see where that has changed. Even in the spirit of telcom co-opetition, such activity can still be construed as collusion. I'm suprised that their lawyers let them do that. Also, the past 30-years of track-record clearly shows that such activity cannot be kept secret.
-----Original Message----- From: Jeff Aitken [mailto:jaitken@aitken.com] Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2001 10:16 AM To: Curtis Maurand Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: The large ISPs and Peering
On Thu, Jul 26, 2001 at 11:21:54AM -0400, Curtis Maurand wrote:
A rose by any other name... The fact is, and history shows us, that when cartels form, things get bad for the consumer. [...] However, The placement of the NAP's is disconcerting, because the process for choosing them was closed.
This makes absolutely no sense. Are you saying that uninvolved parties should be able to dictate where and how large "promising local ISPs" should interconnect? Maybe we should have a vote on NANOG!
"How does this choice of interconnection point make you feel?"
Does it make sense for all of my traffic going to maine.rr.com from lamere.net (both in Maine and in the same communities) to exchange traffic at MAE east 650 miles away?
There's nothing preventing your provider from establishing additional regional peering where appropriate; if they fail to provide the level of service that you require you should vote with your wallet and select another provider.
There won't be if the Tier-1's all form a "consotium." They will collude on network build out and stop competing [...] If the "consortium" is formmed it will wipe out all those strides [...] A consortium will wipe out the glut and raise prices. The consortium will control supply at a lower level. Prices will increase. Yes, but the equalization will happen at the higher price. There's nobody to compete with, so why keep the price down? If you think that's not true, think again.
Proof by repeated assertion, eh?
I'm really confused here. How did we go from "certain large ISPs are working together to reduce the cost of interconnection amongst themselves" to "there will be no competition between these large providers?"
--Jeff