🚀 go-pugleaf

I recently learned of a mailing list that is used for communications
between Albany area Internet Service Providers.

This isn't a list between techies at the various companies -- it's
between the _Presidents_.

Exactly which Presidents?  What are they talking about?  If you ask, as
I did, you'll get responses ranging from "issues" among service
providers in the Albany area to "none of your business."  They refuse to
make the contents of the list public.

The issue isn't the mailing list technology.  A mailing list simply
makes it easier for the ISP companies to communicate.  Even if the list
itself were made public, as one provider writes, "One way or another we
will continue sending private mail to each other."

Certainly private individuals should have the right to private
communications, but should the officers of area ISPs be communicating
privately about the business?  What does that say for competition in the
local ISP market?  What opportunities for collusion does this allow --
or even encourage?  Apparently, we shouldn't have the right to have the
answers to these questions.

--
Daniel A. Norton
danorton@albany.net
7 Vermont View #18
Watervliet  NY   12189-1013
+1 (518) 786-8190