On Mon, 28 Oct 1996, Jian Li wrote:

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The point is that GSL's peering policies are radically different from those of SprintLink, whereas Cable & Wireless seems to have the same policies worldwide. Similarly, I know that GSL's prices for transit used to be much higher than SprintLink's and I suppose still are.

As what I know, GSL's peering policies have two parts, international and US domestic. The US domestic part is exactly the copy of SprintLink. International part is based on the idea of traffic localization.

Fine. This still leaves Sprint with two very different policies, one for the US and one for the rest of the world, whereas CWIX apparently has one policy for the whole world -- or at least for North America and Europe. I believe that over the next few years this is how things are going to go: peering policies and prices for transit will converge, at least in these two large markets. Sprint has appearently made the decision to treat Sprintlink and GSL as two entirely seperate networks. This makes sense based on the way that they structured Global One. The GSL product is appearently intended to be an international Internet product. In this sense they really look more like a no U.S. provider with the rate structure and cost basis to match. If the idea is to drag the traffic to the U.S. (whether because it is cheaper to do so, U.S. traffic is a bigger draw, or the U.S. telephony infrastructure and

At 06:28 PM 10/28/96, Jim Dixon wrote: price structure causes the U.S. to be attractive for Asia - Europe transit) then GSL has to price accordingly. Sprintlink, being primarily focused on the U.S. domestic market has a much easier time with underlying costs and customer concentration. Their terrestrial fiber (as Peter L. pointed out) makes it so.

Americans tend to forget that Europe has a larger population and more money than the US; these basic facts are not going to let the current large imbalances persist.

The imbalances will fade when and if Europe takes its huge population and bigger bucks (marks, pounds,francs,ecus) and wields them like one economy, not a dozen. What drove the U.S.centric model in the first place wasn't lack of European peering, it was that, way back when, It was cheaper to get to Paris (or name your city in Europe) via Washington than straight on. j

-- Jim Dixon VBCnet GB Ltd +44 117 929 1316 fax +44 117 927 2015 http://www.uk.vbc.net VBCnet West +1 408 971 2682 fax +1 408 971 2684

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