On Tuesday, April 16, 2002, at 09:55 , Frank March wrote:
This is an arguement of long standing. In APEC it is known as 'international Internet charging arrangements for services' or ICAIS and in ITU-T as Recommendation D(iii). Precisely the same phenomenon applies to New Zealand and until relatively recently to the whole world, including Europe. Europe now has 'in house' Internet exchanges and a growing volume of indigenous content so that there is less and less reliance on Internet US-centricity. Asia is slowly evolving the same way. Arguments around this matter have been rehearsed on this list previously, when I asked for comment on a New Zealand position to take to the APEC TEL Working Group about two years ago (and received very helpful feedback).
This may come as a shock, but Asia and Australasia have 'in house' Internet exchanges, too :) Europe and Japan have attracted the attention of large, primarily US-based ISPs in a way that Australasia, Africa and the rest of Asia have not. The Atlantic is densely packed with fibre, and it is frequently possible to get access to chunks of the US network from exchange points in Europe just as easily as it is in California (example: peer with MFN in Paris, and you get exactly the same access to MFN's customers as you would if you peered across the PAIX in Palo Alto). MFN operates and pays for two STM-64 circuits between the US and Europe. Peers generally pay nothing beyond a share of the physical interconnection (circuit) costs. Europe's content is localised and generally far less interesting to the US subscriber than content hosted in North America, so that doesn't seem like a tremendous driver for a US company to spend money to cross the pond. The reason for shelling out the cash, as far as I can see, is (a) the opportunity to sell transit, and (b) the opportunity to expand into a civilized and relatively familiar market on the strength of dot-com NASDAQ euphoria. Clearly (b) is no longer a driver, and probably not coincidentally the number of US operators building into Europe right now is low. None are pulling out, though, which either means they're all too busy wading through the sticky morass of chapter 11, or that (a) is still making the European business case work. Europe is a nice big market filled with regulated phone companies and a rich terrestrial infrastructure. The number of potential subscribers per mile of under-sea cable is fantastically higher than the South Pacific, which perhaps explains why nobody is hurrying to offer MFN-style global peering in Auckland. Much of Asia and Africa have large untapped markets, but suffer (from the US perspective) from political instability, unfamiliar culture and extremely marginal terrestrial infrastructure.
My (v. concise) summary of the New Zealand Government position on this matter is as follows: "Noting that NZ has the highest percent of GDP expenditure on telecommunications world-wide (OECD, 2000): we recognise that there is a net economic cost to NZ arising from current charging arrangements, nevertheless, this is not having a perceptible dampening effect on Internet development and use in NZ. Relevant industry opinion in NZ is that there should be no government action taken with respect to the current arrangements." Incidentally, the lack of perceptable effect on Internet development applies throughout Asia as well, in my view.
I cannot see a reason why the US would ever mandate their operators to help cover the cost of internet access in New Zealand, so a position which doesn't expect them to do so seems highly pragmatic and sensible :) Joe - To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog