Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!caen!uwm.edu!lll-winken!telecom-request From: ndallen@contact.uucp (Nigel Allen) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Decreasing Costs of Transmission Message-ID: Date: 5 May 91 13:24:00 GMT Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Organization: 52 Manchester Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Lines: 29 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 334, Message 10 of 11 ryan@cs.umb.edu (Daniel R. Guilderson) writes in Vol. 11, Issue 326, msg. 4: > Forming a non-profit phone network is pure fantasy. > ... There's absolutely no precedent for it. Recall that in the early years of the 20th century, the Bell companies were more interested in serving the cities than the sparsely populated rural areas. So new rural telephone companies sprang up. Some were owned by the local doctor or general merchant. Others were established as cooperatives or membership corporations. (There are some conceptual differences between cooperatives and non-profit groups, but in practice they're pretty similar.) Isn't UUNET set up as a non-profit organization? And aren't a lot of the regional NSFnet networks similarly set up? Now, I recognize that the rural telephone examples were monopolies, albeit marginally profitable ones, and what we are discussing is a competitive non-profit phone network, I don't think one could readily be set up (apart from something like shared tenant services in a co-operative apartment building or office complex), but there is plenty of historical precedent for people getting together to meet their own telecommunications needs when the established carriers weren't interested in serving their needs. Nigel Allen ndallen@contact.uucp