No market risk and the implicit (or even explicit) state guarantee: Pay a fixed amount now, and when Junior goes to a state college, his tuition is covered.
IP-based networks cannot guarantee instantaneous communication, so a substantial amount of buffering (several seconds) was used to smooth out any hiccups.
The transport secretary said the investigation by Mr Laidlaw - who will give evidence to the House of Commons Transport Select Committee on 18 December - found department officials "wrongly calculated the amount of risk capital bidders would have to offer to guarantee their franchise proposals".
As such an absolute taxpayer-underwritten arrangement is now effectively required for the Soviet market, COFACE's decision to guarantee no more than 90 percent of the transaction amount will most likely result in the project's collapse.