🚀 go-pugleaf

Andrew Pam (avatar@jolt.mpx.com.au) wrote:
: Also, where do you draw the lines?  We are a mixture of non-profit
: (www.efa.org.au), fundamental research (Xanadu) and commercial (Glass Wings,
: which is still in the start-up stages and not yet turning a profit).
: Should we be buying three Internet links, or just paying different rates
: on the one link depending on the domain name of origin?

No. You just make sure that you charge sufficient prices to cover
your costs.

Carry non-profit services is not just an altruistic gesture. It also
attracts people to your web site so that they can see what services you
do have to offer. This is the whole nature of advertising on the web.
People will rarely come there to see straight advertising, but if you
make other services available, such as non-profit pages and changing
information, then potential customers will return to those pages and
the advertising will have its designated psychological impact.

So your task is to arrange your charging in an appropriate manner
to meet the costs involved. If this does involve moving the service
overseas, well that doesn't stop it from being an Australian
venture. As you say later, distance is relative on the net. If you
established the site in the US, it would not change how the site
was perceived by customers, nor the actual service offered. In
fact you could even have the site retain an address in the .au
domain if you perceive this as being economically important.


: The Internet is predicated upon the assumptions that every place is equally
: close (no marginal cost for distance), and that everyone is an equal member
: of the net with something to contribute.

I agree. But unfortunately this doesn't even come close to reflecting
the economic realities of providing the service. The international
link is orders more expensive than interstate links.

: 2.  I do not believe that traffic sent should be charged, as it becomes an
:     enormous disincentive to provide information services, something I would
:     think we are trying to encourage in this country.  I note also that
:     although universities and the CSIRO are explicity excluded from this,
:     secondary schools have to pay commercial prices.

I didn't think that this was the case. I believed that unis would
not be charged for _any_ traffic within Australia, but would be
charged a flat rate for all traffic, both sent and received,
outside of the country.

Mind you, I agree with the sentiment. From memory, the US->Aust
duplex is pretty well saturated, but the Aust->US is pretty
minimally used. (Someone with real stats here would be useful!)
If send traffic (both domestic and international) was
free, this would still encourage Aussie sites to provide services
to the international community, without overly taxing the real
resource bottlenecks.

Regards
Michael
-- 
Michael Malone @ iiNet Technologies -*- Internet Service Providers
pariah@iinet.com.au. Ph (09) 307 1183, Fax 307 8414. fido#3:632/552
Copyright asserted -*- redistribution with attribution encouraged!