From matthew Thu Jun 10 11:38:04 1993 Return-Path: Date: Thu, 10 Jun 93 11:38:04 PDT From: matthew (Matthew Belmonte) Message-Id: <9306101838.AA02268@helmholtz.sdsc.edu> To: president@WhiteHouse.gov Subject: Privatization of Internet Cc: nhaberma@nsf.gov Given the plans of the administration and the National Science Foundation to increase the involvement of private contractors in providing Internet backbone services, I hope that the administration will act aggessively to maintain and to increase the access of all Americans to Internet communications. Specifically, I hope that grants to Internet contractors will be enough to allow universities and other educational institutions to maintain their links to the Internet without increasing their operating costs. I also hope that the telecommunications companies can be discouraged from instituting message-unit charges rather than flat-rate connection charges. The current flat-rate system has the advantage that poorer users within an institution are able to "piggy-back" their network access on that institution's flat-rate link. If message-unit charges are instituted, they likely will be passed onto the end users, in which case such poorer users would be squeezed out.