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Date:      Fri, 8 Mar 1996 10:05:18 -0700 (MST)
From:      Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
To:        chuckr@Glue.umd.edu (Chuck Robey)
Cc:        terry@lambert.org, hasty@rah.star-gate.com, chat@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Act Now !
Message-ID:  <199603081705.KAA17161@phaeton.artisoft.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.91.960307221046.30386A-100000@gilligan.eng.umd.edu> from "Chuck Robey" at Mar 7, 96 10:18:38 pm

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> I am a little puzzled.  I saw your notice on hackers, moving this to chat 
> (quite correctly) saying that Chuck is wrong, and message unit based 
> charging must die.  I think I have that correctly, anyway.  I'm confused, 
> because I was never arguing that message based charging was anything at 
> all, I was arguing that the internet can't absorb even a tiny, tiny 
> fraction of the voice traffic (that nows runs on dedicated voice 
> networks).  I don't see where the topic changed, but if it has, to that 
> topic, I'm not holding any position there at all, and I don't want to 
> argue it.  Maybe I should let this drop here.

Well, I can tell you that I think circuit switching is in fact more
expensive than packet switching.

The message unit charges argument is just a supporting argument as a
hedge against a claim that the cost of moving to packet switching
exceeds the cost of keeping circuit switching (should you bring that
up as a counter).

My point is that I think the Internet will subsume the phone networks,
even if you are right about its current capacity, since that capacity
will increase over time.

I'm not very worried about the internet overloading, nor about the
VON paranoia, since I think both ideas ignore the economics of the
situation.  The voice and data networks *will* be integrated, and
there *will* be people with the capability of not generating audit
records for connection creation and tear-down, so billing by
connection will go away.

I think the ability to bill by connect + message units is the *only*
reason things are still circuit switched -- it's not the inability
of packet switched networks (like the Internet) to handle the load,
that incents them, it's the ability of the telephone company to
keep on doing business as usual.


> I was started because of that Voice Over Net article that was posted, 
> and the (un)reasoning over the telco's response to what I saw as a 
> non-issue.  Since it couldn't possibly happen, why would they make a fuss 
> over stopping the impossible (today's impossible being, of course, 
> tomorrow's obvious path).  It's impossible today, why worry it?  When it 
> becomes possible, it's going to happen anyways, because of all the 
> unregulation.

I see it as a non-issue because I think it's inevitable.

So at least we agree, it's a non-issue.  8-) 8-).


					Terry Lambert
					terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.



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