Broadband Pricing Working Group Forum
June 19-20,
2001
Boulder,
Colorado
The Net@EDU Broadband Pricing Working Group held its second spring forum in Boulder, Colorado. Since it last met at the Net@EDU membership meeting last February, the BPG’ s mission has evolved with a more active interest in international networking and a potential role for weighing in on policy issues (when appropriate).
The forum agenda followed the pattern of past forums; attendees hearing updates on a variety of community initiatives and vendor activities on the first day, with the following morning being devoted to more in-depth dialogue on areas where the BPG should be active.
K-20
Initiative, Bill Mitchell (MORENet)
After some restructuring, the focus on the new K-20 Initiative is to leverage the power of the Abilene Sponsored Education Group Participants (SEGP). However, the leadership of the K-12 community should not come from the SEGP’s. Ten states are now passing Abilene traffic to SEGP’s with another ten almost ready.
Hurdles:
Project now called the Internet2 K-20 Initiative and will be project under the UCAID umbrella.
Next meeting will be in Snowmass, Colorado on August 3-5, 2001.
State Networks, Dave Reese (California State
University)
The most recent meeting of state networks was this past April/May and sponsored by the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) and Net@EDU . [http://www.educause.edu/netatedu/events/sn01/ ] At the beginning of the meeting, attendees agreed there is no precise definition of a “state network”. Instead, attendees worked to identify issues that state networks should have if they organized in a common manner.
Issues discussed at the state networks gathering included:
Costs/Charges: Looking at capitalizing the next level of the backbone, this is a relatively small part of the budget. Twenty-five states comprise only eight percent of the Abilene budget. Even if all fifty states participated, it is only fifteen percent of the budget.
Issues driving I2/Abilene for the Network of the Future:
Abilene International Peering and International Transit Network (ITN)
Begun last October, there is the expectation that we can peer with them and provide transit service. Time frame for foreign networks to arrive in U.S. is under three years.
Once undersea fiber between Asia and Europe is established, expect some dramatic global networking changes. Our cost to connect with Europe will be a real challenge. Cites need for coordinated North American approach to addressing this issue
Context for the next backbone:
NSF Distributed Terascale Facility solicitation
Other network backbone evolving environment points worth noting:
every conceivable right of way being explored and/or excavated
- transport (WDM) – this is the focus point now of VCs. .
- switching (very experimental)
-Don’t really need that many optical switches
Canada
Netherlands [Surfnet 7]
STAR LIGHT
Two concepts of what we can do next
A vision for the next backbone
Straw Man Solution for national dark fiber
Higher Education
Updates
Some forum attendees representing the interests of the higher education networking community provided updates on the progress of their individual projects. Forum attendees were encouraged to contribute and update existing contributions to the Effective Practices webpage on the BPG website [http://www.educause.edu/netatedu/groups/pricing/ep.html].
CENIC/CalRen2, Tom West & Dave
Reese
Cal State/4CNET covers the state – with presence in all parts of CA. There is a North-South link and NOC for CalRen2.
DCP (Digital California Project)
Regional Infrastructure Initiative (RII)
Chris Peabody (Georgetown) facilitated the dialogue among forum participants, including representatives from the broadband vendor community. With the recent misfortunes of the IT sector and overall downturn of the economy, BPG members question how this will impact the deployment of broadband. The dialogue did not focus on a particular vendor or technology, but around broad questions.
There are reports that the demand for bandwidth does not come close to meeting the capacity currently available.
Vendor insights:
Higher education insights:
Vendors were asked to present business models they believe provide a different approach to broadband pricing, allowing higher education more affordable access to high-speed networks. The BPG does not define what constitutes an “alternative pricing model.” Instead, it seeks to dialogue with those incumbent and start-up vendors who are willing to dialogue on a variety of pricing models that meets the unique needs of higher education institutions, taking into account usage and geographic location.
Aerie Networks, Steve Lanning, Vice President,
Engineering
Cogent , Kevin Kotrell
Level 3 , Stephanie Copeland, Vice President, Carrier Development
Internet Educational Equal Access Foundation (IEEAF), Steve Corbato, Internet2
Steve Corbato provided a status report on the IEEAF’s progress. For information on the IEEAF: http://www.ieeaf.org/
Latest Actions by the IEEAF and Ed Fantegrossi, chairman of Geographic Network Affiliates-International, the corporate partner of the foundation.
The BPG formed a task force to focus on international connectivity. Members recognize that a high-performance global IT infrastructure is necessary for the support of global research and education. (see Appendix I of the BPG Phase II Vision Paper http://www.educause.edu/netatedu/groups/pricing/).
Garret Sern provided attendees an overview of the BPG International Task Force, its genesis and initial objectives. (see power point presentation). The BPG International Group has made little progress since the Net@EDU member meeting last February, mainly due to task force members travel schedules.
When the task force was created, it was suggested that a BPG goal should be to help developing nations the technical and policy challenges in accessing advanced networks, while converting to a market economy. Because there are many international government organizations, national governments, and non-profits working on this issue, the task force feels that we would be duplicating efforts. Our focus should be on educating the higher education community and developing an effective practices database on the opportunities to education and researchers in the development of high-speed international networks.
The task force has begun research on exiting initiatives where we hope the BPG and broader higher education community can have an impact.
Existing programs the BPG should consider offering their services to include:
· Global Internet Policy Initiative
·
Digital Opportunity Task Force http://www.markle.org/dotforce.html
·
UN Development Programme
·
US Agency for International Development\
Forum participants discussed various opportunities for groups like us to have an impact. Most agreed with the track espoused by the task force group. Our role should be less advocacy and more information brokers. One potential role would be to help higher education institutions in developing nations develop the knowledge base and organizational structures required to access advanced networks.
The Net@EDU community has experience in developing organizational models that could be used in this environment. For instance, the University of Oregon has a program to train network engineers in other countries, providing a lifeline back in the United States in order to leverage their training.
Possible action steps the BPG can take is to build a resource network of current higher education initiatives, make contact with potential partners, create an effective practice database, educate our community on the importance of international networking
Attendees recognize that developing nations have unimaginable challenges. We must remember not to confuse the issues/problems of under-developed countries with those are developed. Some problems are so severe, that many of these countries are not concerned with getting “better prices.” Getting hard currency/funding for developing nations is a real problem. Providing travel expenses for higher education experts to visit these countries would be helpful.
Attendees recognized that with solutions come other problems that impact society and we need to keep in mind the unique cultural contexts of individual countries/regions.
Next Steps
QUILT Update, Rick
Summerhill, Great Plans Network
Rick Summerhill, Quilt Executive Committee Chairman, provided a brief overview of Quilt activities.
The Quilt has shelved its plans to incorporate and will become a project under UCAID. An executive director will be hired by UCAID, but will take its guidance from a Quilt Board of Directors. The Quilt will meet immediately following the BPG. The Quilt hopes it can move beyond organizational issues and begin concentrating on specific projects.
Indiana Optical Fiber
Infrastructure (OFI), Jim Williams, University of Indiana -
Bloomington
Jim Williams spoke remotely from Indiana on the Indiana Optical Fiber Infrastructure Initiative (OFI). (see PowerPoint presentation for more information)
State Involvement:
Timeline
· First light planned 12/1
· Completion date 1/1/02
Unresolved issues
Jeff Kuhns (The Pennsylvania State University) and Garret Sern (EDUCAUSE) provided a joint presentation on the federal and campus policy issues impacting the deployment of high-speed networks. The BPG has debated whether it should become more actively involved with the federal government in crafting new laws and regulations on this issue. While we would prefer to stay above the political fray, there is a role for the BPG as a neutral information resource. Initial contacts with hill staffers have been positive, and the BPG is working to set up meetings over the next few months.
Washington DC Update, Garret Sern,
EDUCAUSE
Garret provided an overview of the changing political climate in Washington, DC and how this may impact advanced networking.
Federal Communications Commission
Congress
1. Deregulation
2. Anti-Trust
3. Federal Loans
4. Federal tax incentives
EDUCAUSE has created a broadband legislative tracking chart with information on the bills introduced by the 107th Congress. This is a live document and will be updated on a regular basis. We welcome your input. The chart may be accessed from the EDUCAUSE policy webpage: http://www.educause.edu/policy/policy.html .
Vendors participating doubt that federal loans or tax incentives will really impact incumbent/large broadband provider deployment plans.
EDUCAUSE Role?
Forum participants questioned whether EDUCAUSE should be weighing in on this legislation. Garret pointed out the difficulty of reaching consensus for our entire higher education membership. This point was reinforced as forum participants differed on the merits of the different bills listed on the chart. Garret stressed that EDUCAUSE represents the higher education community interests. While we try to work with corporate partners whenever possible, we realize that they have there own lobbying resources and do not rely on EDUCAUSE to be their advocate on the Hill.
There is agreement that EDUCAUSE should take a leadership
role in advocating IT policy for higher education. EDUCAUSE has recently formed
a policy-working group comprised of several EDUCAUSE members with an active
interest in federal policy issues.
EDUCAUSE policy staff has contacted congressional staffers involved with
broadband legislation and are working to set up individual meetings during
Congress’ August recess.
Policy Discussion, Jeff Kuhns (The Pennsylvania State
University)
Jeff Kuhns posed some policy questions for forum participant consideration:
Forum participants provided a variety of answers. Due to time constraints, the BPG will take this dialogue on-line via the BPG listserv.
Jeff then proceeded to provide a comprehensive history lesson on the growth of telephone penetration in the United States, with comparisons to Europe. Essentially, the issues we are facing with the deployment of advanced networks are not new.
Jeff then provided a snapshot of the telecom industry, comparing the revenue stream of the different providers:
o DSL Provider
§ IXCs – 0.9%
§ CLECs 20.9%
§ ILECs 78.2%
In order to keep the momentum going, forum participants agreed the BPG should hold two forums a year. The next forum will be held October 10-11, 2001 at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. See the Net@EDU website at http://www.educause.edu/netatedu/ for registration information.
Prior to the October forum, the Net@EDU BPG will hold an open meeting at the upcoming Seminar in Academic Computing (SAC) conference. This is an excellent opportunity to hear an update on BPG activities and talk about these issues in an informal setting. The meeting will take place on August 7 (Tuesday), from 2:30pm to 5:30pm in the Elrorado A room.
The BPG steering committee will keep BPG members and other interested parties apprised of our progress via the BPG webpage and listserv. If you are currently not on the BPG discussion listserv and wish to be added, please contact Garret Sern at gern@educause.edu. We welcome your input.