FCC Ruling, Cost of Internet

Tue Nov 3 23:22:36 UTC 1998

On Tue, Nov 03, 1998 at 01:39:29PM -0500, Ivars Upatnieks wrote:

> The Commission intends to address next week, in a
> separate order, the broader issue of whether conventional dial-up access
> to the Internet, made through calls to information service providers,
> including Internet Service Providers (ISPs), is local or interstate in
> nature.

This stupidity again?

An Internet dialup call is an interstate call if you're in one state
dialing into a POP in another. Otherwise it's not. Duh.

The FCC has much better things to do than debate a point for which the
answer is painfully obvious. If you're going to tell me that when I dial
up to my account in downtown Cleveland from my house ten minutes away, I'm
going to either laugh at you, tell you you're a flaming idiot, or quite
possibly both.

Sorry. My ISDN line at home is serviced by Ameritech, and NACS's PRIs are
serviced by ICG/Netcom. Maybe I should get charged for a call from Chicago
to Denver since Ameritech is headquaratered in Chicago and ICG is in Denver,
even though I'm calling from Cleveland to Cleveland.

If there's something obvious that I'm missing here, please, PLEASE point it
out to me...

Oh yeah. Are they going to insist on charging per-minute for voice calls
as well as data calls? I bet not.

-- 
Steve Sobol [sjsobol at nacs.net]
Part-time Support Droid [support at nacs.net]
NACS Spaminator [abuse at nacs.net]

Spotted on a bumper sticker: "Possum. The other white meat."