HCMC is looking at connecting sometime this calendar year if logistics work out on our end. I'd be more specific but we're too early in the process to know for sure at this point. Obviously I'll update once we have a more specific idea for time frame Also would be helpful to have an idea of yearly maintenance costs up front and a valid Org/LLC to bill our finance dept so they can cut a PO for them if needed. If the business structure were in place on MICE's end I don't think it would be difficult for us to justify at least $1k a year in maintenance to the cooperative for a 1Gb connection. I suspect you would find similar responses from other enterprises our size.
I haven't read all the posts on this yet but can I suggest a maintenance model that charges the first year of maintenance up front and then ongoing yearly (plus obviously the optics) with a different rate for "enterprise" connections vs ISP/CDN/Regional network connections with low or no costs to ISP/CDN/Regional network connections or maybe just initial one time per port costs for them. It seems to me that the value of a peering cooperative to its members is the number of available peer connections to other local networks with the value of the peer exchange being tipped towards having more ISP/CDN connections. I think this would continue to encourage more ISP/CDN connections (which is what most of the network consists of now) while providing for the ongoing financial needs of the cooperative with connections from Orgs who aren't just comparing the value of the cooperative directly to the cost of wholesale IP transit like us. We spend a lot of money on point to point vpn tunnels between us and other peers in our sector and it would advantageous for us to encourage them to join the cooperative as it would allow us to drop considerable monthly P2P circuit costs while increasing available bandwidth vs our current P2P setup. Many of them already have a presence in 511 already (IE: Allina, UHG, MNet, Fairview, City of MPLS, Hennepin County Gov) that I've noticed during a short tour and I suspect some of the vendors we have circuits to may also have a presence (Phillips, Cerner, GE) in 511 as well.
It seems to me that the goal right now is to grow the cooperative as much as possible by keeping the cost of entry very cheap or free to ISP/CDN/Regional networks to encourage growth and dare I say it "synergy" that results in bringing in enterprise connections to fund the cooperative ongoing.
Just a thought, maybe its been discussed in some form before but thought it might be useful input.
