Universal Service
Ameritech to cut fees to carriers (ChiTrib)
Town Hall Meeting on Universal Service and the E-Rate (NTIA)
Telephone Regulation
ICC probing telephone number use (ChiTrib)
Ownership
News Corp to Sell Shares In New Unit (NYT)
Technology
New Media Helps Visually Impaired (CyberTimes)
Treasury Department to Inaugurate Internet-Payment Plan Called
'Echeck' (WSJ)
Television
TV Sins: Sex, Violence and Now, Unbelted Driving (WSJ)
** Universal Service **
Title: Ameritech to cut fees to carriers
Source: Chicago Tribune (Sec 3, p.3)
http://chicago.tribune.com/textversion/article/0,1492,SAV-9806300337,00....
Author: Jon Van
Issue: Long Distance/Universal Service
Description: Ameritech will lower the amount it charges long distance
companies to complete calls by $225 million starting Wednesday. Although
this should amount to a savings of $11/year per phone line, long distance
companies have recently announced price increases by the same amount.
Spokespeople from AT&T and MCI claim that they *are* passing savings to
consumers in their calling plans or MCI's $0.05 Sundays. They also contend
that at the same time the Federal Communications Commission is lowering
access fees, the Commission is imposing new universal service fees.
Title: Town Hall Meeting on Universal Service and the E-Rate
Source: NTIA
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/speeches/ala62698.htm
Author: Assistant Secretary Larry Irving
Issue: Universal Service
Description: Welcoming remarks by Larry Irving to the June 26 Town Hall
Meeting on Universal Service and the E-Rate sponsored by NTIA and the
American Library Association. "This town hall meeting on universal service
and e-rate comes at an opportune time. As you know, the e-rate program has
been besieged on many fronts: by some members of Congress and the long
distance carriers, to name a few. This meeting comes at a point when those
of us supporting e-rate must regroup to ensure that it remains an effective,
viable program. The Clinton Administration is fully committed to connecting
America's classrooms by year 2000 and to maintaining the e-rate program. Two
weeks ago, when the FCC was considering the program's funding,
Vice-President Gore repeatedly stressed the need for the program's
continuation and pledged that he "would fight any effort by Congress to end
the e-rate."
** Telephone Regulation **
Title: ICC probing telephone number use
Source: Chicago Tribune (Sec 2, p.6)
http://chicago.tribune.com/textversion/article/0,1492,SAV-9806300153,00....
Author: Cornelia Grumman
Issue: Telephone Regulation/Competition
Description: Ameritech, the Midwest distributor of telephone numbers, plans
to start publicizing a new overlay area code for Chicago's north and
northwest suburbs. The new area code will bring 11-digit dialing for local
calls in the area. The Illinois Commerce Commission has decided to
investigate how well telephone companies are complying with new rules
requiring them to conserve numbers. The Citizens Utility Board estimates
that only 58% of the 8 million numbers in the area code have been assigned
to customers.
** Ownership **
Title: News Corp to Sell Shares In New Unit
Source: New York Times (C1)
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/financial/fox-marketplace.html
Author: Geraldine Fabrikant
Issue: Corporate Retrenchment
Description: Media giants like Time Warner, Viacom, and Walt Disney trade at
roughly 12 times their cash flow. Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation has
lagged behind, however, at eight times cash flow. To bolster the stock, News
Corp has announced that as much as 20% of the company's American film,
television, and sports businesses -- including 20th Century Fox, Fox
Television, and (speaking of lagging) the LA Dodgers. The sale will allow
the company to pay off some $8 billion of debt. The new company, Fox Group,
accounted for nearly $7 billion of News Corps' $11.2 billion in US revenue
last year.
** Technology **
Title: New Media Helps Visually Impaired
Source: New York Times (CyberTimes)
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/06/cyber/articles/30audio.html
Author: Jeri Clausing
Issue: Disabilities
Description: David Erdody is using RealAudio technology on his Assistive
Media Web site to make magazine articles available in audio form so that
people with visual impairments can have access to a wider range of media.
Though his operation is still relatively small and operates almost entirely
off of volunteer assistance, it is getting "rave reviews" from around the
world. "A valuable and exciting tool to read articles which I would not
normally come across," Richard Zapata, a blind massage therapist from
Phoenix, wrote in an email to Erdody. "I very much thank you for the effort
expelled in putting this site together." "I really hope that this is only
the first of many sites of its kind on the Net," Zapata said in an email
interview. "I await the day when most, if not all, magazines and newspapers
are placed on the Internet." David Erdody's father has diabetes and faces
the possibility of someday losing his sight. So when Erdody was in college
studying education technology he started paying attention to what was and
wasn't available on cassette. "Let's just say we sighted people have a much
larger choice," he said. "I was told by one library administrator that only
3 percent of the published works in the U.S. are made into an alternative
format for the handicapped. So began a venture into what would become
Assistive Media." Assertive Media also is a text-based site which is
friendly to the technology used by people with visual impairments to read
Web pages. You can access the Assistive Media site at:
http://www.assistivemedia.org
Title: Treasury Department to Inaugurate Internet-Payment Plan Called 'Echeck'
Source: Wall Street Journal (B6)
http://wsj.com/
Author: Rebecca Quick
Issue: Email
Description: The U.S. Treasury Dept. will inaugurate a new system for making
payments over the Internet called "echeck," by emailing a $32,000 check to
GTE Corp. for work on an Air Force contract. The echeck program, first
announced in 1995, is a cooperative effort backed by the Financial Services
Technology Consortium, which includes Sun Microsystems Inc., IBM Corp.,
BankBoston Corp., NationsBank Corp. and BankAmerica Corp. The consortium
hopes that echecks will become a widely accepted form of payment, especially
for business transactions. "We think this addresses a big void in the
business-to-business space," said Mark Greene vice president of Internet
payments at IBM. The echeck program will be tested among the Treasury and
about 50 government contractors for about a year before being made more
widely available.
** Television **
Title: TV Sins: Sex, Violence and Now, Unbelted Driving
Source: Wall Street Journal (B6)
http://wsj.com/
Author: WSJ Staff Reporter
Issue: Television
Description: A Michigan State Univ. survey has brought to light yet another
negative being portrayed on television programs. The survey reports that
only one in four drivers on prime-time TV wears a seat belt. "I don't think
it's reasonable to expect bank robbers to jump in their getaway car and
buckle up," says Phil Haseltine, president of the American Coalition for
Traffic Safety, which financed the study. But it is reasonable to expect
more of lawmen, Haseltine says. Indeed, crime and cop shows did use their
seat-belts 31 percent of the time, topping all other types of programs.
Following police shows were situation comedies at 26 percent, family dramas
at 21 percent and action-adventure
show at 16 percent. The survey spanned a two-week period, looking at
programming from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. on ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC networks and on
cable TV's Family Channel, Lifetime, TNT and USA.
*********
Buckle up! Its our law.