DATE: Tuesday, October 7, 1997              TAG: 9710070309

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  101 lines

WEB SITE RAISES QUESTIONS OF ACCESS, CONTROL THE SITE'S CREATOR SLAMS BABY BELLS FOR PROPOSING PER-MINUTE FEES.

Go to Andy Wood's Web site and the words ``Bell Atlantic'' crumble into nothingness. Homer Simpson warns, ``Don't let Bell Atlantic.net Assimilate You.'' And Wood dares the company to wield its corporate power to have the site removed.

Behind it all smolders an Internet issue that could determine how much every Net user pays for time online. Wood's beef with the Maine to Virginia Baby Bell is that, along with other regional Bell companies, it wants the Federal Communications Commission to allow it to charge Internet users per-minute access fees.

Wood, 30, who works at an area computer store, thinks those fees could eventually put smaller Internet Service Providers out of business. He fears the field would then be dominated by giant phone companies like Bell Atlantic that could quash freedom of expression. Especially for people who want to take issue, for instance, with policies proposed by the multibillion-dollar telecommunications companies.

``Let's just say in this case Bell Atlantic was the only ISP, how long do you think my site would be able to fly?'' Wood asks.

Wood erected his Web site four months ago on an account hosted by Virginia Beach Internet Service Provider ExisNet (www.exis.net). Bell Atlantic discovered two weeks ago that the site listed several executives' home phone numbers and addresses. Wood urged irate Net users to bombard them with phone calls, letters and unsolicited magazine subscriptions.

The site may have eventually died an unnoticed death - Wood said he was getting two to 10 visits a week - until a Bell Atlantic executive e-mailed ExisNet CEO Steve Haynes and demanded the site's removal.

``If it is not permanently removed, we will have no choice but to pursue every legal means possible to see that the material is removed and that the guilty parties are dealt with appropriately,'' wrote Eric Vaughn, Bell Atlantic's director of Internet services.

The e-mail opened the door for Haynes, whose ExisNet homepage features a cartoon of David windmilling his slingshot in Goliath's direction. Haynes accused Bell Atlantic of using ``bully tactics'' against its competition, arrogance, anti-competitive tactics and a few other things.

Wood's site, which originally only paid homage to his love of New Age music, has since gotten nearly 1,000 hits. Wood has a Domino theory that stretches from the per-minute access fee all the way to freedom of speech.

The way he figures it, Bell Atlantic could charge small ISPs, as well as itself, the fee. Since Bell Atlantic would be paying out of one pocket and into another, the charges wouldn't affect its bottom line. The charges would take money from the coffers of small ISPs, or their users. That's how the per-minute access charges could put small Internet Service Providers out of business, Wood says.

``Right now, if one ISP doesn't allow something, like ExisNet doesn't allow pornography, you can go down the road and go to someone else if that's what you want,'' Wood said.

At this point, Bell Atlantic would rather let the issue of Vaughn's e-mail die. But Larry Plumb, a spokesman for its Internet division, says the company continues to think an early 1980s access-fee exemption for online services should be revisited.

Access fees were created when AT&T Corp. and the Bells began operating separately in 1984. The fee is a per-minute charge, generally 40 percent to 50 percent of the cost of a long-distance call.

The access fees compensate the Bells or another local phone company for carrying a long-distance call over their lines from a person's home to the long-distance company's network. The local phone company on the receiving end also collects a termination fee for delivering the call.

The FCC in the early '80s exempted online companies from paying the charges because online services added minimal traffic to the networks and access fees could have killed a budding industry.

``Today, the Internet is big business, it's not an infant industry anymore,'' Plumb said. ``It's obviously in our self-interest to say the policy doesn't reflect the cost structure anymore.''

Bell Atlantic doesn't want to ``kill the Golden Goose,'' Plumb said, and would object if the FCC made a proposal that would cost online users hundreds of dollars.

Chris Mines, senior telecommunications analyst with Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass., says he doesn't buy the Bells' logic.

While it is true that the Bells are not getting the same fees they would from phone calls, they are benefiting greatly as the Internet increases demand for second phone lines in homes, Mines said. In 1991, 7 percent of the country's homes had second phone lines, but as of the end of last year 20 percent of homes had installed second lines, he said.

The Bells overstatements about how Internet traffic affects them causes foes like Wood to stake out equally radical positions, Mines said.

Wood is right that ownership of the Internet seems to be consolidating. WorldCom Inc.'s $34 billion takeover bid for MCI Communications Corp. last week would result in WorldCom controlling nearly half the country's Internet backbone. But there will still be thousands of ISPs competing for business and consumer accounts, Mines said.

``Ultimately, will there be access payments by Internet users? Yes,'' Mines says. ``The issues are real, but as soon as you get into this the sides get really polarized.''

In one corner sit Andy Wood, Homer Simpson and a Web site. In another sits Bell Atlantic, $29.2 billion in revenues, and 39 million phone access lines.

So far, it's a standoff. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

NHAT MEYER/The Virginian-Pilot

Andy Wood erected his web site - which includes a picture of Homer

Simpson, below - four months ago, on an account hosted by ExisNet,

an Internet service provider in Virginia Beach.

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