All,
A friend of mine in Pennsylvania received the following e-mail. It was forwarded to him by someone he knows (but I don't).
I pass this along with no corroboration:
QUOTE
Dear Ms. (name deleted by Dennis)
I am firmly against taxing Internet access. You have been given
misinformation which spreads quickly in the age of e-mail. There is no
proposal coming before Congress. There are also widespread but inaccurate
reports that the FCC is planning to impose per-minute usage charges on
consumer access to Internet Service Providers (ISPs). I would like to take
this opportunity to clarify this situation for you.
The FCC has no intention of assessing per-minute charges on Internet traffic
or of making any changes in the way consumers obtain and pay for access to
the Internet. As you may be aware, the FCC has a proceeding underway
concerning carrier-to-carrier payments, called "reciprocal compensation."
These payments compensate a local telephone company for completing a local
call that is placed by one of its competitor's customers.
For example, if a customer of Phone Company A makes a local call to a
customer of Phone Company B, Phone Company A must compensate Phone Company B
for handling the last leg of the call. This payment structure may have been
negotiated by the two phone companies, or may have been based on a decision
of the state regulatory authority. The reciprocal compensation payment by
Company A to Company B may be based on a per-minute charge for the length of
the call, or some other negotiated basis.
Reciprocal compensation is thus paid between telephone companies for use of
the local phone network; it is not paid by consumers through Internet
service providers. As a result, reciprocal compensation does not determine
consumer Internet charges. Typically, the companies involved are an
incumbent local telephone company (ILEC) currently serving a large number of
subscribers, and a competing local telephone company (CLEC) that has only
recently entered the market and has fewer subscribers.
Where reciprocal compensation has been established between two local phone
companies, and the traffic between the two companies (incoming and outgoing
calls) balances out, only a small amount of reciprocal compensation ends up
being paid for whatever difference in phone traffic actually exists.
However, if one of the two companies serves an ISP, the traffic may be very
unbalanced, because the consumer always calls the ISP to initiate an
Internet session, and the ISP rarely calls anyone. The incoming traffic to
the company serving the ISP will be heavier than the outgoing traffic. In
addition, calls to ISPs tend to be much longer than other types of calls.
These differences in traffic flow can affect the amount of compensation one
company pays to another, particularly if reciprocal compensation is paid on
a per minute basis.
The reason for this issue suddenly becoming a matter of public concern is
due to a dispute within the telephone industry over whether local calls to
ISPs are subject to reciprocal compensation. This is the matter which is
now under consideration by the FCC. In the example outlined above, if the
consumer dials up the Internet over the phone lines of Phone Company A, and
the ISP is served by Company B, the question is whether Company A must
compensate Company B for completing the local portion of the call. However,
the FCC is not contemplating a "user fee" for Internet access and has
repeatedly stated that it is not preparing to change the manner in which
consumers obtain and pay for Internet access. I can also assure you that
Congress, and specifically the Commerce Committee, on which I serve, would
take a keen interest in the oversight of any such proposal. Rumors to the
contrary persist, however, and the FCC and Congress has received hundreds of
thousands of letters and e-mails on the subject over the last two years.
Thank you again for taking the time to share your views with me on this
issue, and for providing me this opportunity to respond. Please let me know
how I may be of service to you in the future.
Sincerely,
Brian P. Bilbray
Member of Congress
UNQUOTE
The more I learn, the less I understand. (sigh)
