On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 08:19:41PM +0100, Neil J. McRae wrote:
They've recently slashed their prices to even more absurdly low new levels, and are actively targetting their peers' customers, particularly in Europe. Anyone who didn't expect to see exactly this kind of fallout as a result really hasn't been paying attention.
Well considering the market isn't growing as much as it used to the only way to grow is to take business away from other people. If OT can't deal with that on the street then they should close up shop and go sell kites or something.
They should certainly do something about it any rate rather, instead of stick their heads in the sand and hope it all goes away. Depeering Cogent is doing something.
Clearly Cogent are doing something that gives them a cost advantage otherwise they wouldn't be able to sustain this, so rather than compete
Yes, its called losing money hand over fist. As long as people keep giving you more it makes it very easy to keep doing what you are doing.
with Cogent, FT try to fiddle with Cogent's costs. If I was an FT customer and I'd seen this signal I'd be phoning Cogent now for a quote.
You're missing the big picture. FT depeering Cogent increases costs for both sides, in fact probably more so for FT than Cogent. This has nothing to do with cost, and everything to do with FT believing that giving Cogent access to its customers for free is enabling Cogent to continue selling services below market rate, disrupting business for everyone. They may be right. Certainly if everyone took the same position, Cogent would be unable to continue to operate as it does now, so there is some truth to that belief. Despite what some people may think, peering is not a god given right that you are in any way entitled to receive. Two networks peer when they feel that there is mutual benefit, not before and not after. You may not agree with the other network's decision not to peer with you (and in many cases they me be wrong, and simply don't understand the benefits that are there), but it is their decision to make. If Cogent cared about connectivity to FT's customers, it would man up and pay for the transit to reach them. However, Cogent cares more about the long-term benefits of settlement free transit than it does about the short term benefits of being able to reach FT's customers today, so they choose not to pay for the transit in the hopes that FT will blink. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but that is the cold hard reality of the decision that they have made. It might even be the right decision. If you don't like it, no one is putting a gun to your head and making you buy Cogent (or FT) transit.
No, it won't change anything - other than for a short period of time customers will suffer, wouldn't it be nice if we remembered about the customers.
If you don't like it, buy from someone else. If you sell transit, now is an excellent time to pick up disgruntled customers from both sides. Either side could end the lack of connectivity if they wanted, yet they both clearly see business reasons not to do so. -- Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net> http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)