Yes, I mean that it is absolutely vital and neccesary. To me the RARE OU is a closed shop of people working for a set of R&D networking interested parties, and they should be as long as they do their job. This does not reflect a bit the real situation of the issues that is at hand, many international and regional serviceproviders (non-R&D) must be able to interwork in the Internet. The openness reflected in EBONE and the method of work in RIPE is as a model the only way forward. If we can't attract the telco industry this way by "giving them a market" and helping them to learn what it takes to provide open networking service, we won't succeed in promoting/building the open infrastructre at all. The funny (actually sad) fact is that the CEC model is just to blunt and inefficiant. It is almost contradictory to the goals they say they have - to propomte a IT-industry. You can't create a market by "giving a network" for three years, then hope that a market is created and teh the market will be selfsupporting. This is especially true if the "market" consits of state funded users only, what you get is just a higher taxpayers cost to civer the new costs. --mats could you share with us what this means. Do you think it is not necess ary or that it *is* necessary? Do you think it is achievable. I think it is necessary and achievable and that the right place to do it is RIPE. Daniel