I really wanted to stay out of this one, but something that I remembered from a speech made by an FCC bigwig at ISPCON a couple years ago has pushed me over the edge. His (close enough) statement was "At the FCC, the words "regulation" and "Internet" are not allowed in the same sentence of a document." Their word processors were (supposedly) setup as to not allow it. He stated that the FCC intended to use new IP services (VoIP, etc) to help break up foreign communications monopolies. That is why they were keeping their hands off. So the question that I pose is: Do we actually think that if our greed or inability to find a good peering model, forces us into a "pay for what you use" model, the FCC won't change their minds very quickly and decide that they want their piece of the pie after all? Deciding who is more important - the sender or receiver - is worse than maddening. It's impossible. That's why caller pays in the Telco world and they have alot more infrastructure to track those things than we do. Unfortunatly, I think that this is a train out of control and keeping the regulators out at this point is impossible. Knowing GTE's history (i.e., a company that would never have survived without access charges), who's to say that the BBN movements are not a precisely calculated move to -force- regulators to step in?
Derek Elder US Web Corporation Senior Engineer 212-548-7468 Pager - 888-232-5028 delder@usweb.com http://www.usweb.com A Strategic Partner for the Information Age.