Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!shelby!lindy!news
From: GA.JRG@forsythe.stanford.edu (June Genis)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: Bitnet service is free (?)
Message-ID: <3416@lindy.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 8 Jun 89 19:41:40 GMT
Sender: news@lindy.Stanford.EDU (News Service)
Distribution: usa
Lines: 20

In article <594@sys.uea.ac.uk>,
gp@sys.uea.ac.uk (George Papadopoulos CMP RA) writes:
>I often here the expression "bitnet service is free of charge" in the sense
>that if you are a member of a university you don't have to pay anything to
>register and use it (as opposed, say, to using ARPA or UUCP).
>But surely someone pays for the provision of this service. So where does
>the money come from?
>
>George

In the US BITNET membership is by institution, i.e Stanford
University is a member of BITNET which currenly has about 5
registered BITNET nodes.  We pay one membership fee regardless of
the number of nodes we have.  The fee is based on the budget of the
university which is used as an indication of the *potential* of an
institution to utilize the network.  (Needless to say Stanford is at
the top of the pay scale :-)

June Genis,
BITNET Inforep for Stanord University