Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!isishq!doug From: doug@isishq.FIDONET.ORG (Doug Thompson) Newsgroups: comp.society.futures Subject: Re: Networks, who pays Message-ID: <801.23934295@isishq.FIDONET.ORG> Date: 30 Nov 88 05:04:06 GMT Organization: International Student Information Service -- Headquarters Lines: 73 b>From: bowles@millar.UUCP b> b>Admit, though, that in the past 7-8 years the educational world b>has been largely what's produced "Usenet", such as it is. We'll b>all agree that 7-8 years is a LONG time, but the educational b>(grass-roots) world can get SOMETHING done. b> b>What the educational community can't do is get into consumer's b>homes, with new or modified services. Corporations can - look at b>what cable TV has done around the country; utilities can; the b>government can - but usually doesn't. Well, the situation is not so bad. Right now anyone can buy an account on a uucp machine for $10 a month and $6 per hour DATAPAC charges in Canada. Similar facilities exist in the US for comparable prices. This is usable. Without any further technology (such as an automated uucp link to your home computer which *is* being done, albeit only experimentally) we have a continent-wide e-mail system that is quite cheap. A problem, of sorts, is that it is being done by PeaceNET and its affiliates and is an explictly non-commercial service for non-profit groups, and the "community-sector". Nevertheless, the economic viability of it is pretty well demonstrated. Anyone who can afford a 286 box and Xenix can put up his own uucp site. Heck, you can even do it, though somewhat less elegantly on an 8088 box with DOS and UFGATE and a lot of fiddling about. A Xenix 286 or 386 uucp system can support quite a number of users, in the hundreds, so the cost of creating a site locally can be spread over many users, reducing the per-user cost to something very modest. So it's not a matter of whether it can be done economically, it's a problem of simply doing what we already know how to do. That's a problem of raising capital, assembling the infrastructure, and then marketing the service. Government rarely does things for which there is no substantial demand. The non-business demand for e-mail will be small until the non-business users of e-mail become numerous. They will not become numerous until inexpensive e-mail options are available. Government maybe *should* do something, and in France, with Minitel, government actually got into the game quite early. I'm pessimistic about convincing legislators who aren't really sure what a computer is that there is a need for a public computer network.Bankers are just as hard to convince, because the market demand has to be developed, it's not visibly there. Getting a loan to open a hamburger stand is easy, getting one to start an e-mail service is much more tricky. What I've chosen to do is simply do it. We operate a very small public access e-mail system with links to uucp/internet/fidonet. We charge, people pay. We're growing, Rome wasn't built in a day. =Doug -- Doug Thompson - via FidoNet node 1:221/162 UUCP: ...!watmath!isishq!doug Internet: doug@isishq.FIDONET.ORG