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Fight Internet Access Phone Charges Increase

Please excuse this long, non-gardening post. But this is important for all
of us since we use the internet to communicate. Please read and take action.
Thanks.

Many of you recently received a message concerning the fact that the FCC
(Federal Communications Commission) were considering allowing telephone
companies to impose additional fees on internet providers. You were asked to
send an Email of protest to the FCC. Some of you thought that this was a
hoax. Believe me this is not a hoax and it is serious business. You can
check this out by checking FCC's web page at http://www.fcc.gov (click on
Internet Service Providers and Access Fees). Also you will find at the end
of this post URL's for two newspaper articles, one on the number of Emails
FCC received on their Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and one on what U.S.
West has already proposed for the State of Washington.

YOUR HELP IS NEEDED (please send this message to all of your friends and any
lists that you belong to) TO LET NOT ONLY FCC BUT THE WHITE HOUSE AS WELL
KNOW OF YOUR CONCERNS AND YOUR PROTEST AGAINST SUCH A RULE BEING PASSED BY
THE FCC. We have to let our government know the power of the people and the
number of users that would affect. The big providers (AOL, CompuServe etc)
are fighting this, but we the people, we the internet users, also need to
speak! The telephone companies already make ample profit through
installation charges, monthly phone line fees, and equipment sales to the
Internet Service Provider companies. And many of us have purchased and pay
for second phone lines at home for our internet use. The proposed internet
charges is only a ploy by the telephone companies to make more money off of
us. Can you afford to make the telephone companies richer?

The next step in FCC's process is a Notice of Inquiry. The comment deadline
for this is MARCH 24. Send your Emails of protest to isp@fcc.gov. Emails are
considered informal comments. Formal comments have to be submitted by mail
and the procedure is outlined on the FCC Web Page.

Also send Email protests to President Clinton at president@whitehouse.gov.
Indicate in your mail what you are protesting (FCC rulemaking on allowing
telephone companies to place a per minute charge on internet use) and that
you believe that this charge would be a major impediment to his Access
America blueprint that he spoke of in his State of the Union Address. Ask
for his support against such charges.

Can you imagine what your cost will be if our internet providers (this
includes not only small private providers but the big companies like AOL)
have to pay a per minute charge for telephone line usage? This cost will be
passed on to US, the people actually using the net. The cost of our access
to the internet will increase drastically. PEOPLE, THIS IS THE TIME TO SPEAK
OUT!

FCC Bombarded With E-Mail on Phone Rate Proposal (Ramon G. McLeod, Chronicle
Staff Writer) The San Francisco Chronicle, the URL for this story is:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/chronicle/article.cgi?file=MN56801.DTL&directo
ry=/chronicle/archive/1997/02/14

Lengthy online use may cost more, as US West seeks higher phone fees by
Thomas W. Haines, The Seattle Times, 2/14/97, the URL for this story is:
http://www.seattletimes.com/extra/browse/html97/west_021497.html
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