[AusNOG] Domestic Peering WAS: Vocus peering traffic missingfrom PIPE-IX?

[Mark Newton]

On 10/11/2012, at 1:27 AM, Chris Ricks <chris.ricks at securepay.com.au> wrote:

> Similar to changes in DST effect dates, we have governments willing to make statements without the slightest consideration or understanding of the impact and ask on those companies and persons who provide the infrastructure and expertise that supports the society that elects them. 

So here's the thing.

Network operators plough all kinds of time, money, infrastructure and expertise into mitigating business risk caused by power instability, fire, flood, earthquake, etc.

They invest almost nothing whatsoever into mitigating business risks caused by clueless regulators.

I find this exasperating, because major fire/flood/earthquake/power instability events happen once in a blue moon (how many times per year does Equinix turn off your servers due to power loss?) yet risks from clueless regulators happen literally all the goddamn time.

I don't get it.  Regulatory risk is arguably more severe than disaster risk (politicians usually do things deliberately, with the full intention that their actions have impacts that last for years and years; disasters are more or less random, and always temporary)

This industry in Australia seems terminally incapable of addressing regulatory risk.

Why doesn't Australia's service provider industry lobby and outreach as effectively as InternetNZ? Why do we have a massive thread on ausnog about the fragility of peering over a decade after the ACCC regulated it, instead of having forced them to re-/de-regulate it to suit the modern industry? Why does the bulk of the industry vacillate and kowtow to the government in the face of threats ranging from censorship to data retention to copyright to peering to the NBN, instead of taking control of the issues and providing the government with the strong leadership it needs to avoid inflicting random disasters?

Moreover: why isn't the telco industry as dominant in the field of telco regulation as the mining industry is in the field of mining regulation? Tens of billions of dollars per year pass through the employers of the readers of this list, yet they remain perennial victims, forever unable to shape their own destiny because they almost never take the fight to the government.

Sigh.

    - mark
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