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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.UUCP
Newsgroups: can.general,news.misc,news.admin
Subject: Re: uunet access from Canada
Message-ID: <824@looking.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 3-Jul-87 17:16:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: looking.824
Posted: Fri Jul  3 17:16:52 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Jul-87 15:16:50 EDT
References: <954@van-bc.UUCP>
Reply-To: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Distribution: can
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd. Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 44
Xref: utgpu can.general:625 news.misc:554 news.admin:522

In article <954@van-bc.UUCP> sl@van-bc.UUCP (Stuart Lynne) writes:
>
>Is there any real reason for this? 
>**********************************
>
>None that I can see. Tymnet does not have significantly higher costs of
>doing business in Canada. And in fact almost all rates are the same in
>Canada as in the US. We just don't rate getting this rate.

You underestimate the capacity of the Canadian government for getting
in the way of people trying to do cross-border business.

I think it's still illegal, for example, to ship data from point A in
Canada to point B in canada via point C in the USA.  Usenet has always
been semi-illegal because of this.  Why does a federal express pac cost
$40 from Canada.  Why is a letter (no duty) cost $23?  Why are airfares
much higher?

>Lets face it folks. We have the potential here for getting access to UUNET
>at the exact same rate as users in the US have. We could be on an
>equal footing in terms of mail and news delivery. 

Datapac is actually quite cheap when used properly.  People like Compuserve
and Genie could save their customers a fortune by getting a direct Datapac
connection.  (They put lines for their own net in Toronto, they could connect
these lines to datapac and get a whole new slew of customers if they would
just think about it!)

One answer here is to put a UUNET relay in Canada, connected to datapac.
Have the relay pay whatever charge is cheapest (9600 bps, tymnet etc.)
to get all the stuff on demand from uunet, and then let people dial in
via datapac, or direct in the local calling region.  (thus it probably makes
sense to put the Canadian uunet relay in T.O.)

UUNET is an effort of U.S. user groups, why not have /usr/group/cdn or
whoever fund a node.  In theory, the hardware and X.25 software can
be had from the US UUNET site.  SMOP, perhaps.

Based on phone bills of hundreds per month over Canadian links, such hardware
could be paid for quickly enough.  I can't volunteer them, but watmath and
other vaxen already have X.25 links to datapac.  Hard links to datapac are
not that expensive at low baud rates.
-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473