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To: Jan Crawley who wrote (51729)	8/6/1998 12:46:00 PM
From: djane	Respond to of 61433

FCC may allow better in-home Net connections [Nice boost for networkers...] (via the COMS thread) Posted at 8:23 a.m. PDT Thursday, August 6, 1998 WASHINGTON (AP) -- Internet users frustrated by agonizingly long waits to visit their favorite Web sites could get some relief under a government proposal to encourage high-speed data connections for homes. The Federal Communications Commission today proposed giving incentives to local phone companies to encourage them to build the expensive infrastructure needed for such connections. The final plan could be adopted by year's end. 'Most Americans ... are getting very used to high speed Internet access in the office. They go home and it's the World Wide Wait and it's very frustrating,'' said FCC Chairman Bill Kennard. ''We want to bring that same high bandwidth capacity into every home in America.'' As Internet use soars, so does congestion on the telecommunications networks that people use to tap into the Internet. A voice phone call lasts, on average, three or four minutes. When people go online, they average 28 minutes. Local, long-distance, satellite, cable and wireless companies are in a race to create lucrative high-speed connections to homes. The FCC will be exploring ways to give other companies incentives to build fast connections into the home, too. Bell Atlantic, for instance, plans to offer in some markets this fall a connection that is 250 times faster than is offered by a typical desktop computer modem. Consumers would be charged an installation fee and would have to buy a special modem. Customers also would pay a monthly fee for various packages of service. But regional telephone companies Bell Atlantic, US West, Ameritech and SBC say current regulations discourage them from building such networks inside their own local phone regions. They want the FCC to use its powers under a 1996 law to remove regulatory barriers hindering development of these advanced networks. The FCC proposed giving the Bell companies and other major local phone providers, such as GTE, some regulatory relief in the delivery of high-speed data services but with certain conditions. Under the proposal, the local companies would not have to discount new high-speed services to rivals as they are already required to do with other services. They would, however, still be required to lease these services to competitors. And the phone companies would be free to set consumer prices for interstate data services without first filing price information with the FCC. State authorities, however, would decide whether to regulate consumer prices of data services offered in their states. In exchange for these changes, the local companies would have to lease crucial pieces of their networks so other companies could provide competing high-speed data services. The local companies also would have to provide their data services through a separate affiliate. The FCC believes this is crucial to preventing the Bells and other entrenched local phone companies from using their monopoly power to block rivals from offering competing services. The affiliated company would be required to provide the same services at the same terms to rivals as it receives from its parent. The FCC is not expected to grant the Bells' request to let them directly offer data services across local calling boundaries, which would constitute a ''long-distance'' service, something they are currently forbidden from offering. In other action, the FCC is expected to: --Beef up enforcement of rules requiring cable programmers to make shows available to satellite TV companies and other cable competitors. --Propose giving U.S. phone companies more flexibility in cutting deals with foreign carriers to terminate calls in countries that don't have much competition. Regulators hope this will make it cheaper for U.S. customers to call most Latin American countries. -- Adopt rules for public safety groups to eventually get more slices of the public airwaves to coordinate communications, and to provide services such as wireless transmission of fingerprints and mug shots to and from police cars. o~~~ O