Gordon Cook wrote:

I don't post here much

Any chance of changing that? After listening to endless banter from Ralph Doncaster, I'd welcome of your latest interview with Bill St. Arnaud and Wade Hong on CANET*3.1415927. Pretty please with a plastic figurine of the delectable Ms. Jane on top?

Finally I'd like to ask a question in return. I am trying to look at what will grow up on the ashes of the current industry collapse.

Larger large players, more basement web hosters.

Fiber to the home is beginning to appear in a few isolated areas.

It will disappear just as quickly. Has, in some places. A few years back, VC's were wooed by the concept. They didn't know what the heck it was, nor did they care, so long as those pitching it (who knew even less about it, for the most part) kept dropping buzzards such as "broadband" and "fiber" over and over. Now's the wake-up call. It just isn't cost-effective, which might explain why every company offering FTTH services in the States is either f'd, soon-to-be f'd, or abandoned the plans in favor of something more viable like cable. Whatever happened to WINfirst?

Are there folk with adequate routes and connectivity that would undertake to form a network that might be independent of the current internet core back bone of what (112,000 routes?) on top of which sit the half dozen or so Tier one players that peer primarily with each other and demand transit $$$ from everyone else? Web and email stay on the legacy backbone...new services migrate to a backbone with a cost structure unencumbered by the tier one oligopolists?

No.

PS. Anyone interested in trekking in Nepal in October please let me know off list. eg http://cookreport.com/everest.shtm

When? I'm handnig out summaries of the Cook Report at the Princeton-Harvard game on the 26th. Then it's off to Shanghai to crash the ICANN meeting. Then Eugene to lobby for macro-allocations and true financial disclosure/accountability at the ARIN conference. Beginning of the month works best. I've been benching 300 and tracing Broadwing cross-country fiber routes by foot in preparation, hopefully you'll be able to keep up! Have any other internet luminaries expressed an interest in going? Frank "Proud to be an American" Rizzo PS: I had a bet with my boss: how many of you are watching fireworks tonight? Mail me privately and I'll post a summary to the list.