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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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