From jack.rickard@boardwatch.com Fri Mar 19 11:14:26 1993
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From: jack.rickard@boardwatch.com
Message-Id: <9303190951.A2161wk@boardwatch.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 93 09:51:42 
Subject: STUFF
To: tomj@fido.wps.com
Status: OR


Tom:

Enjoyed our visit last week, again thanks for the hospitality.  

I'm having problems reading the NOS diskette you gave me.  The NOS AUTOEXEC
(not the regular AUTOEXEC.BAT but the NOS ) is badly garbled and this is the
stuff I really need I suspect.

I have been doing a bit of thinking and looking about regarding your concept of
a national alternate network for bulletin boards.  Found some very interesting
things through a friend at a long distance company - ACI in  Csprings.  

The long distance market for 56kb leased lines is going begging.  The LD
carriers have a lot of different types of customers, but ACI would treat me as
a carrier for the purposes of a network like this and is willing to experiment.
 The striking thing is that I could actually throw a leased 56KB line from
Denver to San Francisco for LESS than I can to GOLDEN COLORADO.

There seems to be a couple of reasons for this.  A local line runs between $400
and $700 per month.  But LD carriers actually get these loops for $87 monthly. 
The long haul to San Francisco is $310.10 per month - it is about 947 air
miles.  So a dedicated 56KB link from my office to yours would run $310.10 plus
$87 in Denver and $87 or thereabouts in San Francisco or $484 per month.  I
find that surprisingly low.

Other cities he quoted:

Denver  San Diego       $538.19

Denver  Chicago         $305.24

Denver  St. Louis       $283.10

Denver  Seattle         $323.06

Denver  Los Angeles     $289.04

Denver  Dallas          $258.80

These prices again do not reflect the roughly $175 we have to pay for local
loops on the two ends.

This is really quite comparable to what a local Fidonet network pays on a
monthly basis for long distance to a backbone site.

Reaching the east coast is harder because ACI is primarily based in the west,
so I gather it would be a bit more expensive, but doable.

I haven't a clue what to do with this information, but a national network could
be set up for about $500 per city per month.  Ben Cunningham in Nashville just
did an ISDN session with Aquila BBS in Chicago at 38,400 using Hayes ISDN
adapters, so 56KB lines may not make much sense if ISDN gets off the ground.

But an alternet IP network linking cities in the U.S. looks rather feasible if
56KB lines would handle the traffic.

Just interesting information.

Jack Rickard