From: Jim Dixon <jdd@vbc.net> There is a name for this ridiculous style of argument, but I don't remember it ... The names that come immediately to mind are "capitalism", "what's in it for me" and "TANSTAAFL". Also "reality". Let's recast the questions: 1. How many UK ISPs would notice if seastrom.com fell off the Net? That's largely irrelevant -- I'm not asking you to peer with my home network and transport my traffic at no charge. 2. How many of seastrom's customers would notice if Europe fell off the Net? Not many. 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. So, what you're saying is that US Internet users should be helping to subsidize your socialist Government-monopoly telephone companies that charge you several times what a line is worth. And we should do this simply because YOU choose to do business in a country that supports a sub-optimal economic model. I'm sorry, but I don't play that game. Have you ever considered that you might have a lot less bandwidth cost to the States if (as Jeremy Porter pointed out) the costs to run a line intra-Europe reflected the REAL COST of doing so instead of being government-sanctioned overcharging. To get the who's-subsidizing-whom argument correct, perhaps you might want to consider that the competitive environment in the US is subsidizing your trans-Eurpoean connectivity. Poor models make for poor reasoning, just like talking without listening makes for a poor dialog. The thing that makes for the worst dialog is when you try to advance an untenable position. There will always be a cost of doing business for your company -- if you feel that the current model is unfair, you can (a) lobby your government to completely privatize the telecom infrastructure and deregulate it opening it up to competition, (b) move your operation to more friendly territory, or (c) go out of business. But don't give us this "Europe is subsidizing US infrastructure" dreck. ---Rob