My work recently pertain to a project of re-evaluating local Internet eXchange (or IX in abbr.), and it strikes us heavily with the fact that how Taiwanese ISPs, smaller ones, survive in such low-competitive market. I would like to use the example of Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world (at least for 1 year from now) to illustrate the story as much as I could.
If you ever visit the area where Taipei 101 building locates, you will notice a 2~3 km skywalk is being built. The skywalk links all major commercial buildings in the area, including Mitsukoshi Department Stores, Warner Village Cinema Complex, and many others. The convenience of sidewalk increase the "traffic" to this area (namely Hsin-Yi District) and thus, the area is now the new downtown of Taipei and become very properous. Not just the sales in 101 and other malls/stores increase, restaurants, bars, banks are also benefit from the skywalk.
Each building needs to provide direction, meaning which way to get to other buildings, otherwise people get lost easily. This also means that those stores will not "hold" customers to shop within the store property. One rule here is agreed that although customers come and go, but with the skywalk, stores have higher chances to get a bunch of them....
If they don't do so, I may just visit 101 not Mitsukoshi, or vice versa. Since it's now relatively easy for me to walk and even do some exercise, I will visit most of every stores when I am in the area. Having said that, Taipei 101, the current crowd drawer (because its height and a good bookstore), does not refuse or overcharge other buildings to interconnect. The sidewalk (in and out of 101) is also wide and solid enough to handle weekend shoppers.
If shops (goods & services) are applications on the Internet, buildings would be the infrastructure provided by the ISPs, and the skywalk is about "Interconnection" of those buildings (or we usually say "public peering" --free interconnection among ISPs). In Taiwan, Hinet (the subsidiary of Chunghwa Telecom) could be the Taipei 101 with narrower road for others to visit, or charge smaller ISPs at a rocket-high price for interconnection--if you walk to me, pay me; if I walk to you, you still pay..:-(
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