Re: Overseas connections a waste of time???

[Dennis McMurchy <denismcm@example.com>]

On Wed, 9 Oct 1996, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> As far as I can figure 
> out, the entire SINET community, including 10s of thousands of
> researchers and 100s of thousands of students, now gets its CUSeeMe
> and alt.binaries.erotica.gerbils.in.dark.places.Richard.Gere from one
> measly T1 (provided by Sprintlink).

  My (of course hopelessly out-of-date) "Directory of Electronic Mail
Addressing & Networks" has an entry for SINET = Slovenia IP network.
Great though my faith in the printed word is, I somehow suspect this
is not the SINET you're referring to.  JUNET, of course, I've heard of,
but what is SINET?

> This wasn't so much due to
> primitive infrastructure as to punitive pricing policies by the
> providers, encouraged by your friend and mine, Yuseisho, which wanted
> to prove that Internet growth in Japan could be held below economic
> growth.  (That's a very bitter, bitter joke---I hope.)
 
  It's far from being a joke, I'm afraid.  The Yuseisho is a powerful
component of the bureaucratic dictatorship that effectively controls
this country.  The Yuseisho and NTT together have done so much to
retard the healthy development of the Internet in Japan that it is
almost hard to believe that this was just gross bureaucratic bungling
(as it most probably was) and not the result of a deliberate policy.   

  Apparently NTT (having recently become aware of the existence of 
computer networks) is now set to become the major ISP in Japan with the
introduction next year of its Open Computer Network.  NTT will charge
as little as 10% of the rates charges by current ISPs.  If the Japan 
Times report (October 8, '96) is to be believed, we can look forward 
to 128 Kbps leased lines for between Y3000 and Y4000 a month.  While 
this might look attractive at first glance, think about what it means
for the future of the Internet in Japan.  The current ISPs are stuck
with the high rates they have to charge, precisely because the 
Yuseisho-NTT monopoly they have to deal with for infrastructure charges
them absolutely exorbitant rates.  So they go out of business (except
possibly for some niche markets), leaving the Yuseisho-NTT with an
effective monopoly of the ISP market.  This leaves the whole show 
in the hands of the retarded, nasty and self-serving bureaucrats, to
manipulate and control largely as they see fit.  To my mind this bodes
ill for the future of the Internet in Japan.  

  Any thoughts on this?  Am I way off the mark, or what?


Dennis McMurchy, 
Tojinmachi, Fukuoka



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