Jim Dixon <jdd@vbc.net> wrote:
Europe heavily subsidizes the US Internet. It's not just VBCnet: the European Internet community pays something like 90% of the costs of traffic between Europe and North America. The same applies to the rest of the world.
Most of all Europe heavily subsidizes its own government bureaucracies. In some places it's cheaper to drag a circuit to US and back than from one European country to another. There are numerous licensing problems. Then, you forgot direct U.S. subsidies (like ICM program sponsored by NSF). Without ICM, the access costs for European (and elsewhere) countries would be quite a lot higher. Finally, the situation will change when backbone carriers will truely internationalize by expanding backbones beyond U.S., and when large European companies will expand business to U.S. (some do -- like BT which gave MCI quite a chunk of money, which at least partially were used to build MCInet). Some my friends used to work for Cable & Wireless, which is moving into Internet business as well (in U.S.). --vadim