[wsfii-discuss] Press Release: guifi.net has reached the thousands!

Wed Oct 25 22:42:57 UTC 2006

On Tue, Oct 24, 2006 at 05:50:24PM +0200, Ramon Roca wrote:
> 
> Thanks Julian, we do fully share same points of view. I think this is 
> never will an old thread, instead is one of the main topics.
> Just let me add a few comments. I'm seeing quite often when talking 
> about service providers over neutral.networks people do imagine we are 
> talking about global big ISP. And really that's a part of the story, but 
> not all.
> We are experiencing that the openness facilitates a much varied 
> ecosystem of small and medium enterprises, and that's a quite obvious 
> opportunities. In fact their support is a key, although their 
> investments are quite limited or localized to their interests, by 
> aggregating them is a key of success.
> By that I mean just network participants, such as farmers, or very 
> likely any activity with dispersed but local branches or facilities, 
> like small retailers etc, as well as the universe of service 
> professionals and local companies who provide services to those SME as 
> well to the citizens.
> On neutral networks in some cases they can find better ROI and even 
> better quality of service.
> And this have to be taken instead of a competitive issue (neutral 
> networks never can compete against anybody by its own nature), as a 
> prove that help in enrich local business in a fair environment.

That's a key point! - neutral networks never can compete by definition.

Just to clarify where I'm coming from - it's not that I am in favour
of competition as a method of structuring society or perfectly
competitive markets as a holy grail - really looking to something beyond
that thinking..

But as an argument in the current entrenched market orthodoxy showing
that a neutral network *is* a perfectly competitive market is maybe
a very powerful stance and a meeting point for discussion with
regulators and businesses alike.

It's a 'no competition without co-operation' argument something like:

 * a neutral network *is* the market for telecoms services

 * having competing network infrastructures is like having competing markets

 * these competing 'markets' are not open to any actor - locality
   creates captive 'markets' - vendor lock in

 * you need to co-operate and interoperate to establish this neutral
   network 'market'

 * the creation of interoperable co-operative open access neutral
   networks should be mandated by competition law!

> For going there, neutral networks have to gain some credibility, and 
> very likely a current battle is there.

Sure - 'competition without co-operation is war' but all I'm saying is
that maybe there is a chance here of opening a dialog in the current
language between community/co-operative/freenetworks/municipal
networks and commercial and regulators rather than yet another front?

:)

cheers

/julian