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. ================================ 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. ================================ 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