This has, indeed, become another "Modem Tax", in that it we will probably
see this same call to arms floated around for another 8 years or so with
the date for the comments carefully updated to make it look current.

The FCC, believe it or not, has a web site, where you can review all of
their current Notices of Proposed Rulemaking and other formal processes;
you can also search for documents with a search engine.

To cut to the chase, folks in the US should go look at
	http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/Factsheets/ispfact.html
and
	http://www.fcc.gov/isp.html
The FCC didn't quite close the books on this issue early last year, but
they did refuse to include LEC access charges for ISPs in the Access Charge
Reform rules going into effect January 1, 1998.  A search for "ISP charge
1998" only turned up documents on topics dead and buried, so the LECs have
not re-raised this issue.

For the benefit of those not in the US:  yes, most folks (not all) in the
US have flat-rate calling schemes available to them at fairly reasonable
cost (one of the advantages of not having the phone monopoly owned by the
government), but this was something subtly different:  making ISPs pay the
same access charge that long-distance carriers do for access to the Local
Exchange Carriers' networks (which is a per-minute).  That's actually an
idea the PTTs might find appealing, so watch out.  ;-)

(Oh:  the "Modem Tax" panic comes from a proposal in 1987 to, you guess it,
charge BBS systems the then-current (and substantially higher) long-distance
access charge; the proposal was rejected in 1988, but the same screeds went
around the Internet every year until 1996 (when the next proposal floated).)