Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1996 13:44:51 +0100 (BST) From: Jim Dixon <jdd@vbc.net>

Not at all necessarily correct. We are a UK backbone provider. We carry much of our traffic 6000 miles to California over very expensive Atlantic circuits, where we pass it off to American providers, who use very cheap and much shorter US links. We ship about 5% more traffic to the USA than we get back. So on balance we are subsidizing the US Internet:

* we pay more to carry the packets * we give more than we receive

Before you go making statements like that, please answer the following questions:

1) How many US ISP's customers would notice if vbc.net fell off the net?

2) How many of vbc.net's customers would notice if the USA fell off the net?

You're welcome to stop subsidizing the US Internet any time you please. And be sure to put a note in your trouble ticket system reminding your customers not to let the doorknob hit them in the ass on the way out the door...

If I live more than a mile and a half or so from a central office, installation of a T1 will require a special engineering fee. Unlike you, I'm not cheeky enough to assert that my unfortunate location represents a subsidy to the US Internet.

---Rob

I have a suggestion; Take the BB-cost of the foreign provider, include the trans- oceanic link, add this to the BB-cost of the US peer and divide the sum equally. --Peter