The alternative, IMO, is to have IETF participants who are
employed by
industry companies such as Cisco and Microsoft viewed as official
representatives of their companies rather than as
individual (and independent)
participants.
would the Cisco rep's opinion count the same as the rep for Bill's
Bits-to-Go apartment-building-wide ISP?
I don't see why not. If any person can argument for his/she's cause and that is
held up to actual facts - A's opinion would be as good as B's opinion. You
cannot judge a persons knowledge on a given subject by simply looking at his
workplace.
Of course Cisco or whatever large company probably have chosen their rep. with
good care and from the first look his opinion would count more. But going into
details you might be surprised how little a "general" rep. from a large company
can know about certain topics, but still they have to represent it because it's
their job (Who says they even have an interest). The little fellow from
bits2go... might as well be an expert on topic as he/she could have been
working on topic for a decades!
Conclusion: John Doe at Big-O-Mighty-World-wide-Company might not know as much
as Jack Doe from Little-and-Extremely-Competent-Company on a given topic.
My 2 cents
-NS