Hello Steven,

 SH> But to get back to the point, the evolution of a network
 SH> from one which was POTS based and expensive (you would not
 SH> have liked to pay my long distance bills before I found an
 SH> Internet feed for my net's echomail) to one which is
 SH> efficuent and relatively cheap is evolution.

Hmmm, it appears to me that he relatively cheap is only true because of the
exorbitant charges you have to pay in your part of the world for long
distance calls.

It seems to me the free market economy isn't working as good as it is
supposed to be over there. In countries where the InterNet was booming,
contractors have been working their ass off, to get more and more fiber
into the ground and across the ocean to create bandwidth for the InterNet.

But fiber is fiber and bandwith is bandwith. If an ISP can hire bandwith,
so can a long distance telephone provider. And that is precisely what has
happened here. With the coming of the InterNet and cheap bandwith for the
ISP's, the cost of long distance telephone cost has also gone down
dramatically. Depending on destination, rates have dropped 20 to 100 fold
over the last decade.

Conversely, the cost of local calls has gone up slightly. When Dutch
Telecomn had a monopoly the "last mile" was run below actual cost
and the losses were compensated by the profit on the international calls,
but with the advent of competetion this was no longer possible. Local calls
had to generate profit on their own, so the price went up, but by far not
as much as the long distance prices dropped.

I wonder why this mechanism seems to work different your side of the pond.

Cheers, Michiel

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