_________________________________________________________________ ****FCC Barraged With E-mail Protesting ISP Access Charges 02/14/97 ^^^^^^^^ WASHINGTON, D.C., U.S.A., 1997 FEB 14 (NB) -- By Wes Thomas. A Federal Communications Commission (FCC) request for public comments on a "Notice of Proposed Rule Making on Access Charge Reform" has generated intense Internet activism and a barrage of e-mail to the FCC, Congress, and the White House. The notice raises the question: Should ISPs (Internet service providers, such as AOL and Netcom) be required to pay phone companies per-minute access charges, which will probably be passed on to the ISPs' customers? The FCC notice spawned several urban legends that quickly spread on the Internet. One, a variant of the 1987 "modem tax" proposal, warned that the FCC would require Internet users to pay per-minute taxes. Another said the FCC had trashed all e-mail messages received because they were in the wrong format. And another accused the FCC of "thwarting democracy," calling for an ad campaign and spamming. An FCC spokesperson (who requested anonymity) denied these charges, telling Newsbytes that the FCC had in fact stated that for now, ISPs should not be subject to access charges and that no e-mail messages had been "trashed" (over 165,000 e-mail messages on this topic were received by the FCC as of February 13, the cutoff date, the spokesperson stated). The confusion appears to have stemmed from the inaccessible legal and technical language on the FCC's Web site, http://www.fcc.gov . Barraged with questions and complaints, the FCC belately issued (but did not post) a more readable "ISP Fact Sheet: THE FCC, INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS AND ACCESS CHARGES" on the final day for comments, February 13. The FCC extended the deadline to February 14 several weeks ago but did not widely publicize it or correct it on the FCC Web site, so few were aware of it. According to the FCC fact sheet, which Newsbytes obtained, "Since 1983, there has been an ongoing debate about whether enhanced service providers [ISPs] should be required to pay access charges, based on the contention that these companies use local networks in the same manner as long-distance carriers. "In June 1996, four local telephone companies (Pacific Bell, Bell Atlantic, US West, and NYNEX) submitted studies to the FCC concerning the effects of Internet usage on these carriers' networks. The companies argued that the existing rate structure did not reflect the costs imposed on local telephone companies to support Internet access, and that Internet usage was causing congestion in part of the local network. In connection with these studies and other pleadings, several local phone companies have asked the FCC for authority to charge interstate access charges to ISPs." However, the FCC has tentatively disagreed with the phone companies. "The FCC's initial proposal is that ISPs should not be required to pay current access charges, but the Commission has made no final decisions," the document stated. "The Commission expressed concern about the effects that imposition of access charges could have on the competitive ISP marketplace, and also noted that the Internet would likely not have grown so rapidly in recent years if most users had been required to pay per-minute rates for Internet access." The FCC plans to issue a Report and Order on reforming the interstate access charge system by May 1997, the document added. According to the fact sheet, the FCC also issued a Notice of Inquiry (NOI) On Internet and Interstate Information Services, "seeking to identify what policies would best facilitate the development of the high-bandwidth data networks of the future, while preserving efficient incentives for investment and innovation in the underlying voice network." The deadline for comments is March 24; the deadline for reply comments (comments responding to the initial round of comments) is April 23. The ISP Fact Sheet will be posted February 14 on the FCC Web site http://fcc.gov or is available via the FCC fax-on-demand system at 202-418-2830, document number 6722. The text of FCC proposals concerning ISPs is document number 4824. (19970214/Reported by Newsbytes News Network http://www.newsbytes.com "The Pulse of the Information Age" Newsbytes News Network http://www.newsbytes.com 24-hour computer, telecom and online news _________________________________________________________________