The following, interesting story appeared in today's NY Times. AT&T, by
itself, should be able to at least double the number of people who have
access to the Internet. As part of their new pricing policy, they're giving
away 5 free hours of access each month and unlimited access for $20/month. As
it turns out, some portion of that free access is coming out the pockets of
the regional Bell companies -- without their consent.
 
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SAN FRANCISCO   A day after AT&T announced its ambitious new strategy to
offer millions of consumers low-cost access to the Internet, its archrivals,
the local Bell telephone companies, were crying foul.
 
As it turns out, AT&T plans to use a little-known loophole in the nation s
telephone accounting rules that will force the seven regional Bell companies
to provide Internet customers with free local connections to AT&T s network.
 
Unlike telephone voice calls, for which AT&T now pays the Bells billions of
dollars a year in  access charges   to connect local customers to AT&T s
long-distance network, computer connections made over those same local phone
lines are exempt from these access charges.
 
That exemption is the result of a ruling the Federal Communications
Commission made in 1983, when computer modems were still a novelty item and
the Internet was an arcane technology experiment used primarily by military
researchers and university scientists.
 
 The exemption from access charges was meant to be temporary exemption for
what was then a fledgling industry,    said Dave Dorman, president and chief
executive of Pacific Bell, which provides local service in California and
Nevada.  The line-services market has now matured. With giants like AT&T
entering the market, it is no longer a fledgling industry, and the exemption
is no longer justified.
 
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This "minor" objection aside, a number of people have said that this is an
extremely wise move on AT&T's part because it greatly increases a customer's
"stickiness" to AT&T. Once someone has an e-mail address where their name is
<name>@att.com, they will be much less likely to switch long-distance
carriers. Because this announcement seemingly caught MCI and Sprint
off-guard, it could take the other major carriers some time to catch up. In
the meantime, AT&T could lock down a fair percentage of it shrinking customer
base. If nothing else, it certifies that the Internet is not likely to be a
passing fad.
 
On a completely different subject, the NY Times Internet edition appears
every night at the stroke of midnight (Eastern Time) in PDF format --
complete with the opinion page and crossword. The file's generally only about
100K, so it only takes about half a minute to download, but it does require
the use of an Adobe Acrobat reader to view (and, if you wish, print) it. And
if you print it to a high-resolution PostScript printer, you'll find the
quality to be quite excellent.
 
The URL is http://nytimesfax.com; the actual file is
http://nytimesfax.com/times.pdf
 
Wirt Atmar