[Cryptography] Standards Trolls: Re: net neutrality

[John Levine]

In article <18573.1609728521 at hop.toad.com> you write:
>Anyone could start an ISP because by law, everyone had tariffed access
>to the same telco infrastructure (dialup phone lines, and leased lines
>at 56 kbit/sec or 1.544 Mbit/sec or 45 Mbit/sec).  You just called up
>the telco and ordered it, and they sent out techs and installed it.
>We did exactly that, plugged it into our modems and routers and bam,
>we were an ISP:  "The Little Garden".

This history, that the Internet was built on common carrier lower
level circuits, is well known in telco circles but as you say, not
much elsewhere.

The situation in Europe is much better. Low level transport is
mostly separated from Internet service and there are lots of ISPs.