Internet crisis in Poland

[Katarzyna Dziwirek]

Dear colleagues,
I am forwarding the following message, in the hope that some of you might
find the time in your busy holiday/conference season to write a letter of
protest. This appears to be a serious problem and one that may well
appear in other EE countries in the future. I did not edit the message below
(my schedule is pretty busy too!) so please substitute prices for prizes.
Thanks and happy holidays,
kat
 ************************************************************
Katarzyna Dziwirek
dziwirek at u.washington.edu
Department of Slavic Languages and Literature, box 353580
University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195
tel. (206) 543-7691
************************************************************


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 20 Dec 95 13:30 MET
From: Marta Dubrzynska <martad at pap.waw.pl>
Subject: Polish internet

Dear Netpersonality,

This is a request for help on behalf of the Polish internet. We
have one single internet provider in Poland: NASK. NASK has
bacause of an agreement with the Polish Telecom a
monopoly on lines connecting Poland with the rest of the world.
University's schools and commercial internet providers have to
get their acces from NASK.
Prizes of internet are high. A complete account with SLIP etc.
costs around 60 $ a month. Telephone costs are 3.7 $ per hour. If you
take into account that wages of around 350 $ per month are
considdered normal it is clear why internet is not used by so many people
in Poland.
And now NASK announced that too many people are using the
internet and that they need more money to keep the lines open.
They decided that from January they would raise the prizes,
and that they would calculate costs per bytes sent or recieved.
Yes that's right, we have to pay for letters you send us and we
have to pay for WWW pages you download from us. This will mean
the end of most internet activity in Poland.
If you want to know the details you can find them at:
http://galaxy.uci.agh.edu.pl/~szymon/protest-eng.html
http://www.put.poznan.pl/hypertext/isoc-pl/battle.html

Email your letters to:
protest at uci.agh.edu.pl

That's why we Marta Dubrzynska, Webmaster of the Centre for
Contemporary Art in Warsaw, (http://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/culture/csw/) and
Michiel van der Haagen, Net user (http://www.atm.com.pl/COM/michiel/) ask
your help.
Can you make it clear to our Government and NASK that this policy is
disasterous for Polish culture, economy and education? Please check out
these WWW adresses and react.



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