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World's Fair
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I know Vint has shared several of my progress reports on the Fair, but I thought I'd add one more note to the fray to try and justify a T3 line across the Pacific ocean.

We're making some real progress lately. Quantum will provide us with enough disk to have 1.2 Terrabyte spinning by early 1996. Cisco is considering becoming the sponsor for the Global Schoolhouse Pavilion (which would provide some routers to the core infrastructure as well). DEC is seriously interested in becoming a core sponsor as well.

In addition to the corporate supporters, I think we're doing very well with people for the organizing committees. I meet Congressman Markey on Friday and believe he's on board. Dave Creagh, the executive producer of Monitor Radio (and the founder of All Things Considered) has joined the Organizing Committee, as has William Randolph Hearst III.

I still don't have a White House committment, but a formal options memo has been prepared by Tom Kalil and is strongly supported by David Lytel and Mike Nelson. Tom is riding back from the G-7 summit with the Vice President and believes he'll have an answer for us then.

Technical people are also signing to work on the project. SSDS has sent me a letter committing 1 FTE of top-level system support (these are the people that run the Interop NOC during shows). Mike Schwartz from U. of Colorado has assembled a team of 4 professionals for his year sabatical and Mike and I have received an ARPA grant to provide new toolkits for using the Internet effectively.

In Japan, we've got formal support at the presidential level from Softbank, ASCII, NiftyServe, and VP or up support from NTT Data, Sony, Tokyo Electric, and Cisco Japan. Keio University is officially the secretariat and Dean Aiso has joined the committee. NTT is providing 150 Mbps links from Fujisawa Campus to Tokyo and Japan Satellite is allowing Dr. Murai to do 2.0 Mbps multicasts over the Pacific Rim.

I think the time is ripe for MCI. When we make the announcement, we'd *really* like to have MCI be able to say that you'll run a T3 line across the Pacific ocean. Before I go any further .... I know how much that costs. ;-) I believe Vint is trying to make a case based on 3 legs:

1) straight business 2) government support (e.g., ARPA testbed) 3) World's Fair

I can't help on the long term issues: stability of the goverment money or the straight business case. However, I think that the World's Fair can help justify a T3. We'll be up and running with 1.2 Terrabyte of disk and major support from the Internet community. If we can fill these pipes with useful data, I think we will help stimulate the home and commercial markets.

A business market will take some time to develop, but we can fill the pipes for you at the beginning. At the end of 1996, when the Fair goes away, we hope we'll have left behind a substantial set of databases and a very substantial thirst on the consumer side for that data.

I understand that T3 lines are based on half-circuits. Our Japanese organizing committee is very highly placed and, armed with a U.S. government and an MCI commitment, I believe we'll be able to help get KDD on board. Even if KDD is *not* onboard, we already have a T1 from Tokyo to San Francisco. A T3 half-circuit from MCI would be very useful without a KDD commitment (we can do asymetric routing if necessary).

I think MCI gets maximum bang for the buck by making a decision earlier in the process. That lets us get you into the initial press campaign and also positions MCI as the leader in the Internet industry. You'll gain quite a bit of goodwill and will also have a nice strategic advantage over other telecommunications companies by acting first.

Hope my two cents helps ...

Carl

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