JANET(UK)'s View on the Future of Charging

Kevin Hoadley presented the JANET(UK) view on the future of charging. A copy of the slides can be found at http://www.janet.ac.uk/archive/charging_june99/index.htm

Question and Answer Session

Question - John Lindsay, Kingston University

At the present time the telecommunications world is in a period of tumultuous change and he believed that the JISC should be looking at the wider picture of encouraging access to JANET by students and staff alike. He believed that the question of charging is insignificant when we should be looking at the wider picture.

Answer

Geoff McMullen pointed out that this question was one for the JISC. He agreed that we are in a time of major change. JANET(UK) is looking at the requirements for SuperJANET IV and he believed that improving local access is a more significant issue than it has been in the past.

Question - Chris Cheney, University of Cambridge

He did not believe that using one year's experience of charging was enough to base a new set of charges on. In the case of Cambridge they had made a conscious decision to topslice the cost of the charges for the first year and in subsequent years to pass this back to the departments. Cambridge expected to see their usage patterns change when the charges were passed back to the departments.
There were also other JANET charges that sites could incur, i.e. additional bandwidth.
How did non-JISC funded connections pay for their use of the international bandwidth?
He thought it was a scandal that a decision on the next academic year's charges were decided in the preceding May when organisations had to plan their budgets a year earlier. The JISC had promised to have a decision earlier in the year and had failed.

Answer

Kevin Hoadley stated that non JISC funded organisations paid for their international bandwidth as part of their JANET connection fee.

Joe Hutchinson, JISC apologised on behalf of the JISC Secretariat on the delays in deciding the charges for the 1999/2000 academic year but there had been changes in the secretariat which had contributed to this delay. He appreciated that the delays were unacceptable.

Question - Ian Griffiths, Nottingham Trent University

He had recently been asked to give a presentation to the senior management at Nottingham Trent University. Senior management had understood that networking was important and had therefore decided it should be top sliced as a community. Now they were being told that the use of some parts of JANET were incurring additional charges. The Nottingham Trent University senior management wanted to know how long it would be before all of the JANET service was paid for by each connecting organisation?

Answer

Geoff McMullen reminded the audience that the Dearing report had forecast that the network would be funded by individual organisations in the next few years. However Geoff believed that the services provided by the JISC had a great value which could not be provided by individual organisations purchasing the items separately It was important that the added value of these services at a cost effective price was preserved.

Question - Chris Cartledge, University of Sheffield

Chris pointed out that the JANET(UK) service contract with each organisation required three months notice to change the rate for international charging. He reported that a number of organisations were already looking to purchase bandwidth from other suppliers because the JANET Acceptable Use Policy made it difficult to connect organisations that HEIs wished to connect. Was this policy going to be widened?

Answer

Bob Day reminded the audience that the JANET Acceptable Use Policy dealt with the use of the network only. The JANET Connection Policy determined which organisations could connect to the network. Bob did not believe that JANET would become an ISP, but he believed that the political will was there for the connection policy to be changed. The connection of other organisations was a question for the MANs and their requirements in this area were necessary.

Geoff McMullen reported that at a recent conference on the 3 June organised on behalf of the DfEE both the speakers from the Library and Information Commission and the UfI saw the widening of JANET as vital to allow distance learning to take place. The DfEE did not disagree with these views. We appeared to be pushing against an open door.

Kevin Hoadley pointed out that the ISPs were not keen to see the JANET Connection Policy widened as they wanted to see open competition in these areas.

Alex Reid (University of Oxford) warned that if organisations negotiated their own connections to other ISPs that the community would see the disintegration of JANET. In the long term this would be a backward step.

Question - Graham Thomas, University of East London

Graham asked how organisations would be able to influence the network that they are now partially funding?

Answer

Geoff McMullen replied that in the past the network had been totally top sliced but now that organisations were being charged for some of their use JANET(UK) had to view them as customers. However, the Financial Memoranda for the company did not allow a normal customer/supplier relationship.

Kevin Hoadley said that organisations were now interested in the Service Level Agreement between the JISC and JANET(UK) but they were unable to influence any changes in this agreement.

Question - David Vinograd, City University

David asked why were the JISC charging for use.

Answer

Kevin Hoadley replied by suggesting that the charging was implemented to encourage more efficient/responsible use of the network and also to encourage the ownership of the network by the individual organisations.

Question - Mike Jinks, University of York

Mike Jinks suggested that

there were too many apparent objectives associated with charging and this needed clarifying and
we need to take a strategic look to see whether institutions should be treated as customers (in which case a fairly traditional commercial model of charging, based on volume and/or capacity would probably be applicable) or as beneficiaries of the JISC.

Answer

Geoff McMullen said that capital funds were being made available for the implementation of SuperJANET IV. If JANET(UK) used this funding to put in its own fibre this could reduce the recurrent charges for the network below £20million in which case there might be no need to charge for JANET services. However this was a JISC decision and they may decide to use the funding for other projects.

Annette Haworth, University of Reading, suggested that these comments should be fed back to the JISC so that the ideas could be properly debated. As one of the members of the JISC present she agreed to take back these comments. She asked who had made the decisions to continue upgrading the transatlantic bandwidth which had led to the introduction of charging. She also commented that she had attended the DfEE conference and found it excellent.

Alex Reid stated that UCISA planned to debate the use of JANET and charging during the summer and encouraged organisations to participate.

Tom Husband wound up the discussion by encouraging Annette Haworth and Joe Hutchinson to take back the comments from this meeting to the JISC.

Back to Archive index

WebAdmin