Off Topic: Fw: Long Distance Charge for Internet Use

[List Mom]

Bob and DeeDee Cook said:

>This was on CNN...the vote goes to congress next week...This is NOT a hoax.
>I talked to my Congressman and he too said it was real. Please send your
>vote to your congressman at the web site, I sent earlier.  THANKS !!!
>
>

Here's the skinny... Even though this is off topic, you may find this 
interesting.  You can read our full press release(Mia.Net web hosting 
provider for McCoyPottery Online)
http://www.mia.net/HTML/news/oldnews/news_jan99-feb99.html

Yesterday February 26th 1999, the Federal Communications Commission 
(http://www.fcc.gov) voted on the issue of "reciprocal compensation" - 
the fees passed between telephone companies as payment for terminating 
calls for each other. Specifically, today's FCC vote was regarding the 
issue of reciprocal compensation in the area of Internet access calls - 
the calls each of you make with your modem each time you connect to the 
Internet. 

How does this impact you? In a nutshell, it doesn't, at least not right 
now. The FCC simply decided that your connection to the Internet, even 
though a local telephone call, is "jurisdictionally interstate in 
nature", and the Commission essentially reserved the right to intervene 
later in the matter of how telephone companies compensate each other to 
terminate this type of call. 

Regardless of what you may read elsewhere (reporters and writers in 
general are not well versed in this type of thing), this does not mean 
that your Internet connection is now considered a long distance call. You 
will not be charged long distance rates to connect to the Internet (as 
long as you are not really making a long distance call, of course), and 
your telephone bill, in general, should not change as a result of 
yesterday's vote. 

This does not mean, however, that Internet users will never be impacted 
by this issue. When the FCC does get around to actually ruling on the 
issue of reciprocal compensation for calls to ISPs, there could be a 
major impact on your overall Internet access cost. 

Most ISPs purchase inbound phone lines from competitive telephone 
companies (CLECs). These competitive telephone companies can sell them at 
very low rates because they are getting paid by the incumbent telephone 
companies (ILECs) to terminate calls made to ISPs. If the FCC rules that 
this compensation is no longer allowed, the cost of inbound telephone 
trunks will most surely rise, and the cost of dial-up access to the 
Internet will most likely rise with it. 

Our advice? Watch the news. Listen to the radio. Read the newspapers. And 
call your local representative in congress. In the coming months you'll 
see much debate and discussion regarding this issue, as well as the 
issues of open access to both cable TV distribution networks and those 
portions of the public telephone network required for ISPs to deploy xDSL 
access services. At the heart of all of these subjects is concept of 
consumer choice and a marketplace free of control by telephone and/or 
cable monopolies. These issues are central to the evolution of our 
national information infrastructure, and will impact how each of us makes 
use of the Internet and other emerging communication technologies. 

Read the full article here:
http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/News_Releases/1999/nrcc9014.html 


       Mia.Net 
       NOC Admin 
       Jeremy Anthony Kinsey 

Glossary 
        
FCC - Federal Communications Commission 
LEC - Local Exchange Carrier: A "local" phone company. 
ILEC - Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier: The original local phone 
companies. Bell Atlantic, Bell South, Ameritech, 
US West, Pac Bell and GTE are all ILECs. 
CLEC - Competitive Local Exchange Carrier: The new local phone companies 
set up to compete with the ILECs in the arena of carrying local voice 
(and now data) communications traffic. Frontier, TCG, MFS and Brooks 
Fiber are all examples of CLECs. GlobalNaps, Focal
Communications and ICG are good examples of CLECs that cater almost 
exclusively to ISPs. 
Reciprocal Compensation - The compensation paid by "LEC A" to "LEC B" to 
terminate a call that originates on the "LEC A" network but ends on the 
"LEC B" network. In the case of calls to ISPs, calls originate most often 
on ILEC networks and terminate most often on CLEC networks. This means 
that the ILECs are paying hundreds of millions of dollars each year in 
reciprocal compensation to the CLECs. 

Regards,

The List Mom

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