Joe Abley wrote:
The question of whether the business decision in question is the right one is really a matter for TCL and their owners. But if you assume for a second that as a business decision it makes sense, then all TCL are doing is what they are supposed to be doing as a commercial company -- trying to maximise their profits. They're not a government department, and they're not a charity.
This is bordering on OT, but as business conduct has direct bearing upon operational issues, here goes: I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of TCL customers, yours truly included, questioned the wisdom of said business decision that effectively locked them out of sites that in some cases they needed to access. JSR noted that the decision meant international traffic charges were incurred for some users, and how many helpdesk calls about "I'm a Clear/Paradise/Saturn/Netlink customer who need to access the Kiwibank site, but can't" were logged during the time? If the intention was to show how fragile the NZ Internet is, TCL certainly succeeded. I doubt it "maximised profits" however through that decision.
Also remember that it was people working at CLEAR who came up with the APE in the first place, and built it with assistance from their friends at Citylink. CLEAR and Plain were the first people to peer there.
If CLEAR and Telstra NZ had not been willing to peer with people for so long at the APE, it's entirely possible that it would never have reached critical mass, and might not have grown to the size it is today.
It strikes me that Clear and its techies (hi Joe!) had a very different idea as to the benefits of peering than Telstra has demonstrated recently. Certainly, the APE Web pages seem to say peering is mutually beneficial rather than a commercial resource to be milked, but maybe I'm showing my ignorance ... -- Juha