North American Network Operators Group
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Re: Sprint peering policy

  • From: alex
  • Date: Tue Jul 02 11:14:32 2002 
> 
> I think this is putting the cart before the horse.
> 
> We were getting upgraded bandwidth capabilities,
> fiber put in the ground, etc from traditional Telcos
> prior to the rise of the Internet; they were finding cheaper
> ways to run phone service around.

This is totally incorrect. Ask anyone who had been in this business from the
beginning of nineties, not late nineties. Telcos, while upgrading their
systems, happily pointed at the PUC filings and sold you DS1 that went two
blocks for $700 per month, that being inside a city.

> The rise of the Internet as a telecom bandwidth demand
> driver attracted the attention of investment bankers
> and capital, which then became somewhat of a set of
> complex feedback loops (capital going into all sorts
> of internet industries, infrastructure, etc, partly
> because it appeared to be good business and partly
> because of hype).  The result was that speculation
> and hype drove overcapacity.

This again is incorrect. The rise of content attracted investment bankers. 

> Before anyone had invested serious money in any of
> the internet infrastructure companies, people were
> building out 10 megabit, T3 backbones and were talking
> to telco gear providers about what it would take to
> do 155 megabit and 622 megabit backbones and so on
> and so on.

This is again incorrect. The people that you are talking about were UUNET
and MCI, and we are talking 1994.

> It was clear to those of us in the late
> 80s and early 90s that if demand kept pulling, we needed
> to keep creating bandwidth. 

There had not been demand in 80. Neither had there been demand in the
beginning of 1990s.

> But in no way can you claim that it took a terabuck
> in capital push to make it happen.  Demand pull was
> fully operational and working just fine before
> ISPs started being snapped up by phone companies
> and visa versa, and the huge money came into play.

Yes I can. It did take terrabucks to get this industry rolling.

> Hype might have been lower and growth somewhat
> slower, but I can easily see the set of people
> who were building out backbones with T-1s and 
> the early fiber links having grown them up to
> networks capable of today's traffic.  

Are you talking about Net99 here?

Alex