As a non-European member of Ebone (RBS), Israel would like to present the following questions to the OU proposal: 1) There is no mention of the lines to the USA in the budget. Who will be funding these lines? If the NSF will agree to 50% of the costs, wouldn't that mean that the OU would have to include the other 50% of the costs in its 'total accepted costs', thereby increasing it from 1,800,000ECU? Or is this proposal based on the NSF picking up all the costs of all the lines? 2) Will the line cost to Israel be the model used for all non-European countries? As opposed to the rest of Europe, where the OU pays 75% of both ends of the line, in the Israeli case, the OU is picking up 100% of only the European end of the line. Will this be the same arrangement for places like Japan or the Far East that will connect to the OU? 3) What is the definition of 3rd party traffic? Can you give some concrete examples of 3rd party national traffic as stated in section 6b? 4) Who is the owner of the physical line if the OU pays 75% of the cost? 5) Who is the owner of the RBS equipment or to use USA terms the POP (Point Of Presence) in each country? Does the OU supply this equipment or does the OU just commit to a physical IP termination point with no end point equipment? If the OU is not responsible for the POP, can any equipment be used (i.e. other than cisco) and what will be the OU's commitment to integrate such equipment into the OU cloud? Thanks, Hank Nussbacher ILAN - Israel