Re: Another Point Of View (Round 2)

[James Love <love@tap.org>]

  On Mon, 2 Dec 1996, Bill Frezza wrote:
  > And on a point raised in another post, yes I see the biggest short term
  > threat as being nailed-up calls, a practice likely to become even more
  > prevalent as increasing numbers of individuals and small businesses try to
  > host web sites on their home 
  
     Hosting a web site from home happens, but not much.  It's cheap to get 
  a server to do it for you, and then you don't have to provide the server, 
  or the service.  In DC, you can get a flat rate ISP and a personal web 
  page for around $15 per month.  Empirically, this isn't any big deal now, 
  if you believe the data Bell Atlantic is providing in the MD case.  I'm 
  not ready to devote a line and a computer to the net, just to see my home 
  page on the Internet.  
  
  
  > Nailed-up circuit-switched circuits are
  > truly anti-social (even more than calling for taxpayer supported subsidies
  > for the info have-nots <g>.) The biggest long term threat is that we never
  > get facilities based competition and have to live with a regulated monopoly
  > and all of this unproductive lobbying forever because folks like the CPT
  > create an economic environment inhospitable to potential competitors by
  > setting mandated rates too low (which will also have the side effect of
  > slowing down the rollout of ISDN even further).
  
  
       A virtual flat gives people incentives to hang up the phone once in 
  a while...(200 hours goes fast if you don't).
  
      But the goal should be to have everyone nailed up... in the longer run.
  I think NATCO can do this now, with ISDN, for $17.90 per month.  But then 
  NATCO has a CEO with a PhD. in physics.   
  
       
      Bill seems to be saying (he is saying) that high prices are actually 
  good, because they encourage entry.    Maybe Bill should lobby the PUCs 
  for even higher rates.  Hmmmmmm.... Maybe.....   nevermind.  
      
      Oh, one more thing.   In game theoretic models, it is the expected 
  prices after entry when are important... not the prices before entry.
   
  
       jamie
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  James Love / love@tap.org / P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
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  Center for Study of Responsive Law
     Consumer Project on Technology; http://www.essential.org/cpt
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