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From: Eric Hunting





Dear Ms. Gonzalez,



I have a tale to tell from the gutter of the Information Superhighway, the

place  forgotten Net users get swept into by an increasingly Malthusianist

communications industry. It's a long tale, and rather depressing, but if you

can bear with me you may find it of some interest.



How long does it take to get access to the Internet? If you're disabled and

live in New Jersey it's 7 years -and counting...



I suffer from medical problems which forced me to pursue an independent

education, home based employment, and electronic alternatives to paper books

-things which the Internet has long been touted as the ultimate

source/medium/solution for. I was barred access to conventional college or

university education on the grounds that my disability, which restricts me

to working from home, precluded my eligibility to financial aid programs -or

so every college or university I contacted claimed for years. Thus I had to

rely on my own resources to pursue a completely independent course of study,

centered primarily on computer science which I presumed was the most

practical avenue of employment for someone in my situation. Despite a total

lack of income, my studies went fairly well. In fact, vocational and

computer skills evaluators at Welkind Rehabilitation Hospital have estimated

my self-learned computer skills as worth a minimum $50k salary from any

Fortune 500 company. But close to a decade ago my studies began to run into

problems. The ever climbing costs of textbooks made them increasingly

difficult for me to obtain and often, because of the campus monopoly on

access to these books, they were unattainable by 'outsiders' at any price. I

couldn't buy used textbooks because the colleges and universities in New

Jersey refused to let 'non-students' purchase them. I was unable to get help

from the regional Department of Vocational Rehabilitation because, as one of

their letters put it, they could not 'justify the use of state money for

education of the disabled because education affords no guarantee of

employment.' At one point I actually had to mail order college textbooks

from the Soviet Union because, translated into English and shipped all the

way here, they were still less then half the cost of American textbooks.

Further complicating things was my deteriorating health. I suffer from a

hyperallergic condition which makes me very sensitive to things like the

dusts, fungus, and chemicals associated with paper books. The very books I

had struggled so hard to obtain were starting to make me ill! I needed an

alternative to paper books, an electronic book system to which I could

transfer my books. Solving these problems was clearly beyond the means of a

lone impoverished disabled person. I needed help. I needed access to

academics who could provide me inside access to university resources. I need

to be able to communicate effectively with people inside the corporate

cloisters of the computer world. But how? My letters and phone calls to

academics, when I could even track these elusive people down, went

unanswered. Eventually I was lucky enough to find one academic willing to

speak to me, a Columbia computer science professor who told me outright that

the reason I couldn't communicate with academics was because they had all

virtually abandoned all forms of communication save one; the ARPANET. Thus

with his brief encouragement I began my quest for ARPANET and later Internet

access.



It seems a simple thing but, alas, nothing is simple in New Jersey

-America's own East Berlin. Few of the administrative people in the colleges

and universities that had ARPANET access here had the slightest clue as to

what it was, including the then Dean of Drew University. In fact, in those

days one had a hard time finding people who even knew what a modem was -and

that was true of AT&T employees as well! Those few people in the

universities who understood what I was asking for were extremely negative.

This was NOT a resource to be offered to 'non-paying customers' even if they

were disabled. After all, the last thing university administrators wanted to

do was encourage the efforts of an 'independent student.' Why, the whole

idea that someone could pursue university level studies without paying a

university tuition was a threat to their whole system! Years went by and the

ARPANET turned into the Internet but things still didn't improve. Even the

backing of such luminaries as Michael Hart wasn't enough to persuade

university people to so much as give me the time of day. However, with the

creation of the commercial spin-off of Princeton's JvNCnet a few years ago

came a ray of hope. They offered Internet access to the general public,

something common on the West Coast but unheard of in the Neolithic East.

Presenting my sad case to them, I was finally received by a receptive and

sympathetic audience. Despite the fact that they usually charge a pretty

high rate, by national standards, for their services, they were willing to

donate to me a full SLIP connection complete with a UNIX account so I could

use their computers to aid in my study of UNIX -something I could never

afford to do since my days as a Bell Labs Explorer Scout. Finally, after so

many years, it looked like I had finally obtained the access I had worked so

hard for, but there was a problem.



Since the break-up of Ma Bell the 'local' calling areas for NJ residents

have steadily shrunk and today the rates for calling out of the tiny

flat-rate areas are almost as bad as long distance. The JvNCNet has few

dial-in nodes outside of the Princeton area and though they have an 800

number dial-in node, it's a premium service which costs them a great deal of

money to maintain so they could not offer its use to me. Thus there was no

way for me to call into their service locally. Unlike the other RBOCs, Bell

Atlantic doesn't have any special lower rates for the poor or any special

service options for individual phone numbers. Being so sympathetic to my

plight, The JvNCNet staff went out of their way to find a solution to this

problem and for nearly two years negotiated with every one of their

corporate and academic subscribers within my local calling area to see if

they would allow me to dial-through their sites and thus gain local dial-in

access. Try as they might, the JvNCNet folks could find no one to cooperate.

The attitude toward the disabled in New Jersey, especially in the corporate

and academic worlds, is extremely negative. We're surplus population

undeserving of education, employment, credit, or any kind of consideration.

Things looked grim but then, suddenly, Bell Atlantic stepped forward with a

solution -or so it seemed.



Bell Atlantic provided the JvNCNet with digital Centrex services that

allowed them to link their various node sites together. Their Centrex

representative offered to setup a 'special' Centrex conection just for me

which would allow me to dial-in to the JvNCNet's Centrex system as though I

was a remote office for the very reasonable flat rate of $5 a month. It was

the answer to my prayers! Finally, I could get the same easy SLIP access all

those university people take for granted. I could quickly and easily reach

people outside this godforsaken state, get my stymied education going again,

find help in building my desperately needed electronic book system and

browse a worldwide library of paperless texts, look for telecommuting

employment, and participate in the virtual communities I'd so long been

isolated from. But again, there was a problem. Bell Atlantic had never done

something like this before so, as the Centrex rep claimed, they had to go to

the FCC for tariff approval. The JvNCNet and I were forced to wait, and

wait, and wait. After a year we were told that AT&T had gotten into the act,

petitioning against the tariff application on the supposed grounds that only

long distance companies should be allowed to offer such services -and AT&T

had already given me the bum's rush repeatedly. In spite of this, the tariff

was eventually approved and we were told that my special connection would be

provided in a couple more weeks. We waited, and waited, and a month later

there was still nothing. The Centrex rep became elusive and when finally

tracked down told the JvNCNet people that the whole thing had been canceled

because they couldn't really provide the connection they had promised after

all. Why? They just suddenly realized that they couldn't connect

'residential Centrex' to 'business Centrex'. There was no more explanation

then that. They just bailed out for no clear reason and I was just supposed

to take it -and keep thinking happy thoughts every time I saw one of their

damned Information Superhighway ads on TV.



Unwilling to accept this explanation, I wrote a scathing letter to the CEO

of Bell Atlantic NJ. To my surprise, he responded and seemed

uncharacteristically determined to get to the bottom of this breech of

faith. Unfortunately, no one in his company would admit to having ever heard

of me or the JvNCNet -the biggest Internet service provider in the region an

important Centrex client. They couldn't find the Centrex rep either and so

the CEO actually dropped the whole thing in my lap, asking me to contact

JvNCNet on his behalf in order to get their name of their own Centrex rep! I

complied and when the fellow was  cornered the real story came out;



In truth, there was no special Centrex service being setup for me. The whole

thing was a product of this rep's imagination. What, in fact, Bell Atlantic

had been doing was trying to setup a telecommuting specific Centrex service

which was intended to afford Centrex users the option of adding people's

homes as remote offices on their Centrex system. In typical Information

Superhypeway fashion, they'd been running TV ads for this for months but

hadn't actually gotten any approvals for it. When the FCC finally decided to

approve it they imposed the rather questionable stipulation that access to

this service would be restricted only to employees of a Centrex client,

preventing Centrex from being used to provide public digital network access.

Thus I was locked out. None of this was intended for me or had anything to

do with my situation. The rep was only using me to try and sell a Centrex

service Bell Atlantic hadn't even put together yet. Unfortunately, this

explanation didn't help me in any way. Bell Atlantic's CEO claimed the whole

thing was 'out of their hands.' They claim to have no means to solve my

dial-in problems and have told me that they have no intention of providing

any Internet access services of their own. 



With no other options possible, I've had to accept JvNCNet's donated access

despite the huge expense in regional phone charges. I've also had to abandon

their offer to let me have a UNIX account because I can't stay on-line long

enough to make any practical use of it. I have nominal Net access but it's

unclear how long I'll be able to keep it. SSI provides me with only $350 a

month income and I'm spending at least a third of that in just occasional

Net use. I've tried contacting all the long distance phone companies for

help but none of them can do anything -none of them have any real digital

networking capability or have any Internet access services. In fact,

according to MCI's PR people, their much touted and advertised networkMCI is

nothing but a promotional gimmick. There is no such thing as networkMCI, not

even an office or the like. It's all just smoke. (some day I'm going to find

and drop-kick that kid all the way to B-6-12!) The only alternative I have

left is to become an Internet service provider myself but, with the banks in

the region still in the 19th century, unless some investor appears with the

money to bankroll such a venture it's nothing more then a fantasy. 



So here I am, 7 years after starting this sad journey, desperately clinging

to a most tentative SLIP connection like a drowning man clinging to piece of

driftwood and asking myself, who is this Internet for anyway? Clearly, it's

not really intended for the likes of me. I'm like the poor black kid

sneaking in the back door of the private school so he can sing with the

white's-only choir. Is this the sort of Information Superhighway everyone

wants? Another bastion of Malthusianism like the bloody universities that

started it all? 



Eric Hunting

hunting@tigger.jvnc.net

105 South Hillside Ave.

Succasunna, NJ 07876

Phone/FAX#(201) 584-5944





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