Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!maytag!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: ont.uucp
Subject: Re: Is it time for a "uunet-north"?
Message-ID: <90801@looking.on.ca>
Date: 6 Feb 90 18:20:53 GMT
References: <90Feb5.222929est.827@church.csri.toronto.edu>
Distribution: ont
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 45
Class: discussion

Dream on if you think you can offer Rick 100 customers at 100 per month.

A few months ago UUNET reported about $50K/month in revenues.

Do you think Canada could account for 20% of that?  Not likely.  Face it
folks, we are a lot less unix-saturated that the USA, particularly the
area of the USA that uunet is in.

They built their business partly on the fact that they can sell you uucp
time for less than you can pay in phone bills to call somebody LD who
gives it to you for free.  They did this by buying wads of 800 number time
in bulk, and getting a fat discount.

That just isn't nearly as possible here in Canada.   If Datapac got their
act together it might be, but unless you are 100% efficient, and don't use
the datapac dial net, datapac is more expensive than a telebit call.

And we live in a country where it's cheaper to call California from Toronto
than Winnipeg.

Something is possible, but I don't know about Rick's proposal.

One idea would be to have ONet hand over operation to a private firm,
the same way that Nysernet and CAPnet did.   ONet "owns" very little,
as I understand it, perhaps some software and a router or two.  Most of
ONet's "assets" are actually things rented from Bell etc.   I understand
most of the routers are member owned, too.  (Correct me if I am wrong)

Same was true of NYSERNET.

Such a private firm could then do, at little incremental cost, what
PSI (which managaes NYSERNET) is doing -- set up uunet like services.

Actually, they're setting up more than that.  They're running white pages
and database services, and putting terminal servers in various cities.

ie. if you have an account on a NYSERNET machine, and you're in another
city with a node on that net, you can dial a local number and telnet to
your machine.   Like datapac, but part of the fixed price deal.

I don't have the time now to offer something like this on my own.  What I'm
doing now consumes plenty of my time.  But if some people want to get
together, I would be interested in joining.
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473