[governance] Re: The Internet (as we know it) can never be "private"

[Daniel Kalchev]

On 18.07.11 22:02, Salanieta T. Tamanikaiwaimaro wrote:
> For your information, I have been working on pushing for the building 
> local IXP but that in itself is not the solution. There are numerous 
> other challenges.
>
While not the immediate solution, building one or more local exchange 
points greatly improves the chances for a more level playing field.

In Bulgaria, we have been victims to the same "unfair" situation, with 
all sorts of opportunists coming and selling international bandwidth to 
the country, at outrageous prices. And this has continued for many, many 
years.

But then, eventually local players began to understand (something we 
have been trying to tell them for many years), that the Internet is not 
"a connection to somewhere out there", but rather, everywhere and that 
an ISP is not merely buying and selling Internet connectivity as it was 
perceived in the past -  they are "producing" the Internet.

Initial IXP attempts, supported by the monopoly telecom failed, but this 
did not prevent many private interconnects to exist. Thanks to few 
commercial initiatives, we now have several IXPs. Because they are 
commercial, they compete with each other. This has in practice freed the 
competing ISPs, lowered their costs tremendously and provided cheap 
connectivity to end users. The key to freedom was competition and lack 
of any regulation.

Eventually, those international players came, invested in their own 
connections to the IXPs and now beg the local ISPs to sell them 
connectivity to the outside world at orders of magnitude lower prices.

At the moment we enjoy much faster broadband Internet and much lower 
prices than is available anywhere in Europe.

This is not to say, that local IXPs are the solution, but they do help a 
great deal.

Daniel
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