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Speak Up On FCC VoIP Regulation
Back in March, 1996 the ACTA Petition was filed which in effect asked for the internet telephony software companies selling to consumers to be treated to the same regulations as phone companies. While the FCC never ruled on ACTA, the petition started to raise questions about the future regulation of Internet Telephony in the United States and around the world. Some countries were quick to ban internet telephony based on the out of control hype that existed back in the Spring of 1996 while many other countries took a "wait and see" approach.
The pulver.com Petition is in many ways the exact opposite of the ACTA petition insomuch what I was asking for is that end-to-end Internet Telephony over Broadband remain unregulated. After seven years of waiting, now that VoIP technologies have gone mainstream and now that consumers are once again using these technologies and now that these technologies work quite well, I wanted to remove the cloud of regulatory uncertainty when it came to VoIP and broadband Internet Telephony. My hope is that "we" as a community can encourage the FCC for fast action on the FWD petition as a way for the FCC to help encourage investment. Once the regulatory uncertainty is removed, I strongly believe investors will once again look at the VoIP industry as the hot space to invest in and encourage innovation in.
Please take advantage of the pulver.com Petition and share your comments with the FCC. Click here for details on how to reply to the petition.Please reply by March 14th."
What is this all about? Just give me my freakin' internet access and let me use whatever apps I want on it. If someone else wants to put together something using the infrastructure of the internet, let them doing it without distrupting internet business as usual in any way. VoIP? Great, just don't expect me to put up with all types of restrictions on it or to take a hit on regular internet usage.
Surely the transport mechanism doesn't matter. If you're providing a method for person A to talk to person B why should any one service be deregulated when others are regulated? I think that individuals using this over their broadband links is one thing, but for-profit companies wishing to invest into this industry don't have a strong case for avoiding regulation of some kind.
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
I'm not entirely sure that government regulation of telephone is a bad idea. While the service they provide is terrible, it's cheap, and available to most everyone.
I hope that this doesn't affect my Vonage. It was nice being able to tell qwest to kiss my ass, it would really suck to have to crawl back.
I get local, long distance, voice mail, caller ID and a ton of other features for 25.99 a month
This issue has some interesting implications. On one hand, I want to say VoIP shouldn't be regulated, as the FCC really should have no say in the internet, but were that to happen, telemarketers might find some interesting and obscure loophole allowing them to call us relentlessly, all because they'd be using VoIP phones routed through some system allowing them to contact non-VoIP phones (ala the past internet-phone company startups).
is the essence of this matter, imo. In the sense that the Net is a necessary part of any nation's infrastructure I think that the provision of Net services should be regulated and in the absence of competetive provision should be provided by government. The downside is that once the government gets its fingers in it's hard to keep them out. What we really need here is regulatory support without any regulatory repression. Rock and a hard place anyone?
Is there any reason to believe the VoIP will flourish with regulation, let alone reason to believe that it will flourish without it? The telephone industry is an institution in the US. (Try living for a month without phone access). It seems to me that for VoIP to work en masse, it will have to be somewhat backward compatible with the current system.
In short, I can see how VoIP would be cool if it worked completely free of the current phone networks, but I don't see it as practicle. In regards to this issue, I can see why it could argue that it should be regulation free, but on the other hand, I just don't foresee a market large enough to justify regulation for it. If I'm missing something, please feel free to enlighten me.
You're only as smart as your brain.
... trying to slashdot some poor schmoe server are we?
click here for the original, click there for this other story.. how about a direct link to the petition? Thanks
When it comes to anything other than basic crime or perhaps national defense, I just don't trust the govt anymore to secure my rights. I honestly trust technological solutions alot more than political ones. e.g. Implementing technology that makes it impossible for them to regulate voice calls without shutting down the internet. This is the way the future simply has to go, and I think our efforts and money would simply be better spent there.
if we don't get this ruling then VoIP may well be blocked by the government. Voice bits, being inately fatter than data bits, can be,literally, screened out by the simple installation of a physical filter in the cable.
KFG
If broadband Internet Telephony which doesn't touch the public switched telephone network (PSTN) is ruled as "Telecommunications", it could be very problematic for Linux distributions like RedHat, which ship software like GnomeMeeting, especially as they can be used to provide a cryptographic telecommunications system in conjunction with ssh tunneling or CIPE. Until distributors exclude such software from their distributions, software like RedHat 8.0 and Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 would be illegal in the United States.
There is the issue of universal phone access. If a large segment of the market flees the existing carriers, it will become even more uneconomical to provide service to everyone in the US. The univeral access fees would have to be increased, putting the telcos at a further price disadvantage. I don't shed any tears for the telcos, but we should apply these special tax/surcharges without regard to the transport being used (land line, cell, voip, sat phone, whatever).
A good compromise would be to levy the universal access fees on any dialable phone number (e.g. Vonage) but leave pure IP based service free (it would be difficult to inpossible to regulate anyway), and not impose any additional regulation on voip carriers.
Okay... so I read the petition, and afaict they're trying to find loopholes. They point out some areas where their services is slighly different from what is defined in the Telecom Act. They just didn't seem to make any strong arguments.
However, and this is much more important, they never explained (not in the petition nor in the submission) -why- their service should be unregulated.
Here are some questions for pulver.com:
Why was the Telecom Act written? What does it say that is harmful to consumers? Why should we help your company fight it, and what does your company win if your service is unregulated, and what does it lose if it gets regulated? What does it mean for your customers?
You claim there will be innovation in the VoIP field once it gets unregulated... why is that? What regulations are so harmful?
So, yeah, I have lots of questions here. I don't expect to get them all answered. But I have a feeling we're not getting the whole story here.
I feel that if VoIP is regulated, this brings into play a very interesting question. Is the internet, which can be used for almost anything besides transferring actual physical objects (wouldn't that be cool!), something that can be split into different segments? To target one function of the internet, VoIP, is to invite regulation of other services. Take streaming video for example. Should that be regulated like TV? The same goes for internet radio. Where is the line drawn? This is what needs to be established. The internet is so much more complex than simple telephony, that it is impossible to only regulate one aspect of it, without taking into account the other aspects. The internet is not like airwaves; it is not like telephone lines. Why does regulation exist? Does it exist to give profit to a little clique of individuals? Or does it exist to bring order to a limited resource? The internet is by design, a non-limited resource. Theoretically, it could hold a very large volume of traffic, and deal with it fine. There is no reason, to regulate something which does not need regulating. People want it. Companies have to step up, and give them what they want. The government has no role in this aspect. If it puts the telephone companies out of business, so be it! Just like the RIAA, and the railroad companies, they will cling to their vestiges of power and control as long as they can, and this only halts technological advance and innovation. We must be on the cutting edge, or we will be left biting the dust by other countries.
As long as there is no telephone number is used in providing the service, it shouldn't be considered a Telecom service.
we can't get petitions like this for issues I'm more educated about(i.e. DMCA). I like the idea of point and click democracy.
My Blog
But do you really want VoIP telephony to remain unconnected to the POTS network? The existing telephone network is a tremendously useful infrastructure. People who dream about global networks seem to often miss the fact that we already have one. And I'm sorry, but a significant part of that tremendous public good comes from the fact that it's been regulated - particularly when you consider countries outside North America, and particularly poor ones.
Trying to keep Internet telephony away from POTS is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Imagine if you were asking for cell phones or marine radio phones or satphones to remain unconnected from landlines. Is there then any real point in having them? Without regulation you end up with little fiefdoms, islands of communication. "Well I met my spouse because we both had Nokias, ya see". I actually think we've only barely avoided this in the cellphone standards wars to date.
I want communication to be ubiquitous, and I want less separation of modes, not more. The history of telephony deregulation in the US and Canada is not an inspiring one. Part of the reason Internet communication has so far eluded these calls is that it's been so damn useless no one really cared. As it becomes something that affects people's lives, you're damn right democratic representation will get involved. You see the same force at work in the increasing calls for spam legislation. What is that but email regulation?
If voice over IP is regulated like analog phone, it should also have similar privacy provisions to analog phone. And if those provisions were to spread to other IP traffic (on which your right to keep secrets and not be spammed is minimal), that would be a very good thing indeed.
Of course, it might not pan out that way; I wouldn't be surprised if in fact the protection of phone calls wound up being eroded to the point emails are at now (i.e. anyone with a security interest can read you, anyone with a commercial interest can spam you).
One day the current regulatory glitch will end, and when this happens I'd much rather have everything be run like phone calls are run now than like emails are run now.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Just what we need, more government regulation. After all, we all know how well that usually works out.
As long as I can run a wire or set up two antenneas between my work, home, and my Dad's house, and talk over them, the telecoms are doomed. In 30 years no one will make money off of selling bandwidth infrastructure any more than they have ice delivered now. Refriderators meant we could make our own ice, and new technology will render all fat parasitic telephone company slobs jobless. Bring it on.
But do you really want VoIP telephony to remain unconnected to the POTS network? The existing telephone network is a tremendously useful infrastructure.
Ever hear of DSL?
to simply purchase wealth, thus eliminating all economic inequities in the Brave New World of the future.
KFG
I agree with the original poster.
Clearly, regular telephone service must be of very high quality. Regulation seems to be a reasonable way to guarentee the highest quality phone service and to manage the local telco monopolies from spinning out of control.
And that's why VOIP, when connected to the NA phone network and when allocated traditional phone numbers should be regulated the same way. Simply put, I have an expectation of service. In an emergency, my phone HAS to work. Post-failure lawsuits are not a satisfactory regulatory option.
On the other hand, a personal telephone system, aka "Intercom System", need not be regulated, regardless of the number of people on that system. Just as long as there is a clear understanding that these disconnected systems are not held to the same standards as a real telephone.
In other words, if I dial 911 on a telephone, I expect response. If I dial 911 on some unregulated telephone system, I should KNOW that it isn't a real telephone system.
I have a VOIP phone at work. It sucks. Poor quality, poor stability.
SBC (and their ilk) do not want 'unregulated' competition.
SBC is supposed to offer equal local access.
Yet, SBC is allowed to only offer DSL access to SBC customers. If you are on an alternative local phone company, you can not get DSL from, say Yahoo! or SBC unless you have an SBC line.
So why this double standard?
as a bit of a pre-waring, I'm lazy...
ok, while I feel that they shouldn't be butting in on this, I don't really know how to tell them that. If you're gonna make an argument, make a clear and consise one...
I have finals this week, and my brain is fried from studying. it's one thing to post to slashdot, it's another to convice a government agency that they need to keep out of a field because I don't want them making money at my expense.
as much as I hate to say it, is there a cliffnotes for this subject- something I can spend 10 minutes reading before sending an intelligent and informed message to them?
Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
Simple; VoIP systems connected to the public telephone network can be regulated like circut-switched calls, and systems that are purely digital can rely on encryption for their security. Stick the regulatory gizmos at the interfaces. Simple.
The dream reveals the reality which conception lags behind. That is the horror of life- the terror of art. -Franz Kafka
Why not? I mean they like to regulate and tax the hell out of everything else, why should this be any different?
This country sucks.
This is really, really important in order to prevent barriers from preventing widespread adoption of VoIP. The major telcos are highly threatened by VoIP because it effectively eliminates their revenue from long-distance calling. The idea of this initiative is to make sure that VoIP calls are treated like any other data on the internet. The telcos would love to be able to prevent you from using VoIP and somehow be able to charge money for it.
I think that slashdotters know that eventually, the technology will win the war. So, it is better to get the right technology into the right hands now.
simon
home page
Damn, I wish I was more "hip".
If they can regulate VoIP, they can (and they will) regulate anything. Soon we'll be paying a fee just to tap out morse code on the pipes between floors in our houses.
F*ck all. The REAL problem (imho) is that the legal system is about 30-60 years behind the internet, average age-wise. The "lawyers and judges" can't keep up with the realities so they try to force a square peg into a painfully round hole (the average 'netizen's arse).
Yeah, we oughta sign the petition.
But instead of just sticking our fingers in the leaking dike, mayhap we should write to congress to increase the techno-literacy level of our government and legal system?
*slaps forehead* oh wait, my bad, asking the government to bring competent people into a beauracracy is like asking an elephant for a mouse. The one fears the other and would sooner stamp it flat or flee entirely than do the obviously responsible thing.
F**********CK!!!
I love ignorance.
A.C: Posting anon since I got flamed for breathing. *we don't need no steenking karma*
If they regulate net telephony, why not regulate tins cans and string.
The reason why industrial regulation is acceptable is because it is not a severe limitation on individual liberty. With net telephony, anyone who knows how to use the sockets library, and send UDP packets can write their own net telephony code.
Why would we want to regulate that? Classifying *ANY* software that can do net telephony is obviously overly broad.
Anyone who thinks this is a good idea, should remember how most protocols on the net got started: individual freedom to tinker.
jabber: johnynek@jabber.org
Aside from avoiding long distance charges and facilitating better sound quality, what's the point of voice over IP for consumers? We have a huge infrastructure in place for the faciltiation of voice over a switched telephone network that works fairly well and comes at a fairly low cost. I can reach a remote village in central
America, over the phone, but in many of those places, you'd be hard pressed to get electricity for a computer, let alone an ISP.
For carriers, there's an advantage of a unified infrastructure; any service can be provided over the same network. In that sense, the regulation issues arise; what services should be regulated, how, and why?
If the same network is being used for telephone, radio, TV, etc, what regulations apply? Frankly, does anything really need to change from a regulatory perspective? Today we have a shared network for these services (the electromagnetic spectrum); in the future, we may have a time division multiplexed packet switched network over which those services travel.
Even today, regulations of the telephone network impact data communications - you use the telephone network to connect to the Internet. You use the cable network to connect to the Internet (depending on your access method).
Why do we have regulation of these services anyway? What are the regulations that are imposed on telephone carriers?
The FCC must really think this is important to assign it a docket number this quickly. They assigned one in less then two weeks! Usually, it takes 4-6 months for them to do that!
They've also suspended their ex-parte rules insofar as comments are concerned to make it easier to file them. Be assured that I shall file comments.
The government got into the telecom regulation business to throttle abuses of the AT&T monopoly. There exist no inherent reason to regulate telephone service. Forget the idea regulation obtains low cost, reliable service. Forget the idea the Universal Service program helps the poor. Telephone service remains out of reach for the poor. The monopolies doubled the cost of service in the last 10 years. Forget subsidies. Telecommunications proved the worst performing information technology sector during the 20th century. Pick any metric. Cost performance improvements. Employment growth. Revenue growth. The breakup of AT&T in 1984 made some aspects of telecom competitive and left some under monopoly control. Check the relative performance of the two. Consider what might have happened if the government decided to regulate computing. We would still be sharing time on an IBM 360 and paying by the minute.
Vonage is a VOIP service and believe me, it's quality and reliability does NOT suck!
"This process contains three phases: (1) Completing a cover sheet, and (2) Attaching documents or submitting typed comments, and (3) Receiving a Confirmation." (from ECFS user manual)
Upload expert, submitting an attached MS Word 6.0 and higher, MS Excel 4.0 and higher, Word Perfect 5.1 and higher, ASCII Text, and Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF), as specified in the ECFS user manual. Or (maybe?) do a quick file submission under "Broadband over the traditional telephone." (I'm not sure if this files under the proper proceeding, as it provides minimal information so you may want to use expert.)
File using expert
Now instead of ranting here on the issue. Make your statements on the issue available to people other then techies, law types and such. Not that I'm saying law types don't come here, or techies don't understand ... err ... shut up ... right. The rest of this comment is thrown in for reference.
Home Site ECFS (Electronic Comment Filing System)
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/ecfs/
Documentation in regards to proper response filings in response to the petition posted by pulvar.com":/ DA-03-439A1.pdf
http://pulver.com/fwd/fccfwd.html
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch
The CFRs referenced from time to time are Code of Federal Regulations. On the site referenced, you should come to see quickly there are different titles corresponding to various sectors of industry, Title 47 referencing Telecommuniation.
USC stands for United States Code. You can search this database or download each to view structurally.
I have just discovered all this information out in the past 15 minutes via Google and the www.fcc.gov site and www.pulvar.com. I can't give you a cut clear definition of the difference of U.S.C. and C.F.R., however there is an about page that clearly defines this on each respective home site.
In other words, I'll leave my post and allow the higher states of entropical discussion to follow ;)
P.S.I'm not really a coward, just an ignorant fool who forgot his password/email. Ohhly well. That also means to imply I am not affliated with anybody pertaining to the topic of discussion.
Not quite so evidently. This ENUM (e.164.in-arpa) system, would give your internet connection a 'phone number'.. which would be most useful for voip.
Im sure your government will find some way to lock it down to 'protect your freedom'. After all if it works kinda like a dynamic DNS, it will make it easier to track p2p sharers. people that do illegal shit online... 'Unpatriotic' postings.... 'dissidents' 'people that say bad things about gwb'... oh i mean 'TERRORISTS!'
1) Grab IP address.
2) do an e.164.in-arpa to get 'phone number'
3) look up in reverse directory
Cool... no need to subpoena ISP's. Heh, this is actually kinda scary...
Sure am glad I dont have 'US Freedom' no matter how hard bush tries to force it on the rest of the world...
those who control the past, control the future. those who control the present, control the past.
Slashdot has no problem with the govt. regulating MS, but when they want to regulate something slashdot users like, suddenly regulation is evil. If the govt. is allowed to regulate standard telephony, they must do the same for VoIP. Otherwise, VoIP software companies and ISPs have an unfair advantage over telephone companies. I propose deregulating telephony, rather than regulating VoIP.
Vote for Pedro
What defines a communications service? Normally, a service that is part of the PTSN (Public Telephone Switched Network). The FCC regulates the PTSN for the following reasons: 1. Interoperabliity: I should be able to take a phone that I bought in Massachusetts to California, plug it into a phone jack there, and have it work. I should be able to connect to any other phone hooked up to the PTSN no matter what phone company the other phone is connected too (there are literally hundreds of phone companies in the United States). 2. Minimum quality (uniformity): There are technical standards with regards to frequency response, distortion, audio level, number of ringers allowed, echo in the call, etc. etc. These are to establish a minimum quality for the PTSN. There are also rules establishing area codes and LATAS, E-911, etc. Finally, there is a requirement that voice serice operate even when the local power is off. 3. Rates: The FCC, along with the various states set local phone rates. For example, The FCC mandates "lifeline service" a cheap measured service for low income families. This is based upon the premise that having a phone is in: "The public interest, convenience and necessity". These and other things define what a phone company is. NOW....in the recent past, the FCC has waived many of these rules. For example, look at the difference in quality and reliability you can have with mobile phones. It's all over the place. This is because mobile phones are not considered part of the PTSN. Instead they kind of: "Hang off the edge" of it. The FCC lets the marketplace decide how good the call needs to be. If a particular service has lousy quality, the belief is that the public will buy another service. AND (and this is an important point) Other services are available! There is generally but one wired phone network, but there are plenty of wireless companies. Same thing with VOIP companies. What the telcos are saying is: "Hey, you require US to follow these costly rules, but RCN, AT&T Cable, Vonage and others don't have to. This is unfair. RCN, AT&T cable et al are marketing their services as a replacement of the main phone line. In my opinion they should be regulated then. Why? Simple. Their service dies when the power goes out! What if you got sick during a storm or your house caught fire and you couldn't call for help because the power was out? Vonage responds that they market their service as a 'second telephone service' rather then a primary one. However, lately they have been marketing themselves as: "The broadband phone company". If they want to follow this path, then they should be regulated too. Personally, I think it's GOOD that the FCC regulates the PTSN. Now, should free world dialup be regulated. No. Why? because it doesn't hook to the PTSN, nor is it marketed or intended as a replacement for it. It's more like a big intercom system.
The problem with regulation is that it doesn't apply internationally very well.
Currently I have a vonage digitalvoice (which absolutely rocks btw) but I took the voice router out of the USA and plugged it into my network in scotland.
This means that I've got a US number, yet it rings in the UK. I've got unlimited calls to the USA for $40/mo.
In fact, vonage is sooo price competitive that at some times of day they beat my local telephone company for uk calls!
Regulation might make this sort of thing difficult in the future and that'd be a real shame. I look forward to the day when I can have a few different VoIP providers in different geographical locations and route my calls to the one that provides the best price.
10 days later, no phone service, so I borrowed a phone to call them. Took about 15 minutes to get thru the menu maze and the hold time. They wanted my phone number to look me up. I was told I should've remembered the number from the web site. (Why didn't the web site say so?) I growled at them until they tried to look me up by address. Couldn't find anything. Very unhappy about the prospect of another 6 day wait, I suggested I could just sign up again. They said I shouldn't because if I was in their system, why, I'd get billed twice. Ok, I know the quality of help from support lines and such can be abysmal. Perhaps if I'd called back I would've got someone more competent.
Back to square one. You can get a cell phone the day you walk into a store, but I don't want one. Instead, I tried to hunt down the telco's competition. There were a few other local phone providers but none of them did residences. Finally hit on VoIP. (I'd gotten cable modem set up in a mere 2 days.) Took less than 10 minutes to sign up and start using it. But, I never successfully received a call, so I cancelled that part of the service. Would be nice if friends and family could call, but I can live with the arrangement I've got and hope reception of calls is put in working order soon.
It can be fun messing with officious people who want your phone number. So far, I haven't been refused any service.
Officious person, pointing to line on a form: "You forgot to fill in your phone number"
Me: "No, I didn't forget"
Officious person: "We have to have a phone number."
(At this point I could say "no you don't" or "why?" if I feel like playing some more, but I usually skip it because who wants to hang around in a dreary bureaucratic setting all day?)
Me: "I don't have one"
Officious person: "uh, well can you give us some other number like your work number?"
Me: "Ok, 555-5555"
Officious person: "um, no, we can't use that number. Is there some number we can reach you just in case there's some problem?"
Yeah, right! Liars. They just want to harass me with telemarketing. About then I turn to the exit and this finally convinces the form police that they don't need a number after all.
I suppose I could've saved time by putting down, oh, Gray Davis's phone number, which I doubt they'd recognize. It's amusing watching the expressions on their faces. First is a weary pained look because I'm "one of those". I'm making their life more difficult by refusing to give out the number I must surely have, because everyone has a phone, right? Then amazement that I actually might not have a number, just like I told them. Then it's a mix of contempt and pity because they're thinking I might be a dirt poor deadbeat who doesn't pay phone bills (maybe I'm homeless!), and finally bafflement because I don't look the part.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
My first inclination was for non-regulation as well, but we sometimes tend to jump rather quickly when we personally feel the weight of governmental oversight. As VoIP becomes more widespread, it has the potential to eventually become yet another vector for marketers to bombard us with undesired filth--all without having to follow the same rules which limit their already rapacious intrusions into our lives.
. . . and chop down a tree in a federal forest with no one around to hear, do I have to pay taxes ?
This is a very good point.
:-) that my dedicated VoIP phone of the future will be able to talk to the internet, my computer, PDA or mobile and obtain a list of allowed callers and only let certain numbers though (and give other users voicemail). While this is possible at present with Caller ID and PC software I hope it will be standard in "the world of tomorrow!".
:)).
I'm included to think that commercial provision to companies and end users of such a service should require regulation to protect consumers against fraudulent and inexcusably poor quality providers (who will be both individuals and other companies).
This could even be part of a larger consumer rights act governing the way companies do business on line, with specific clauses and amendments for particular industries such as telecoms regulation (though such an act would have be be at Federal level in the USA and at European Union level Europe in order for it be effective and not suffer from regional loopholes).
(While of course I appreciate the internet is global much online business is conducted within national or eurozone boundaries which is why it would be worth investing time in such a bill.)
However...I'd like to think (and this is possibly just wishful thinking
*Really* neat features would be:
- Ability to check for black listed caller ID's in real time (ala MAPS/ORBS (only without Alan Brown
- Ability to take a number, connect to something like the W3C's vision of a Semantic Web and search and find a match for the the number - and so obtain the nature - of the business calling.
This way you could only let certain types of companies through, while blocking others - i.e. always block banks and credit card companies, apart from my own bank and credit card company and always block companies like double glazing firms (unless I've said I'm expecting a call back from a particular company).
If the caller was of "unknown" origin I'd like to be able to leave a brief recorded message telling them that if this is not an unsolicited call from a commercial entity to say 'leave a message' to leave a message on voicemail and I'll call you back (and warning them that if this was a commercial unsolicited call I'd prosecute the company who left the message).
Hah! Something similar happens to me all the time to
:-)
me. I don't have a land line, but I have a cell phone, and here in Greece the caller gets charged with the whole cost of the call - you'd be amazed how paper-pushers try to avoid these...
Maybe that's the reason that telemarketers avoid me - I just try to keep them talking
Commissioners NARUC
and their 2003 Winter Meetings taking place Feb 22-26.
NARUC already has a strong anti-VOIP
resolution (word document) set to go through next Sunday.
If this get passed it will create an unnecessary tax and crippling administrative burden on the intenet.
This makes our much more immediate problem - the
NARUC Telecommunication Committee
If their draft passes, it will mark a dark day for IP Communications in the United States.
Please take a
look at the people registered for this meeting and reach out to them and
let them know that VoIP should not be regulated in the United States.
Your collective feedback can make a difference.
I think everyone here is suffering from a severe case of no-timeline-prespective-itis.
Consider for a moment just how long the telephone was in operation before we gained our current level of quality and flexability. Now consider the state of VoIP.
Do you really expect VoIP to do what POTS does now next month?
But that's not all the needs to be considered. I keep hearing this and that about regulation resulting in a higher quality of service. While regulation can provide a higher quality of interoperability, it very rarely provides a higher quality of service.
While we're swapping anecdotal evidence, I'll bring up two situations that most people on /. are quite familiar with now:
I've chosen some easy targets here, so let me choose some harder ones so I don't get flamed for just showing the negative cases.
Consider the phone company, which the above post thinks so highly of in terms of quality of service. Local phone service is more regulated than long distance phone service. Taking into account increased entropic tendancies inherint to long-distance communications, which service provides a higher quality at a lower price? Also consider the responsiveness of your local phone service in comparison to your long-distance phone service (I'm assuming here that you're not going for a bottom-of-the-barrel-no-frills long distance service).
How about an example of a tech-oriented thing that is without government regulation (as much as that is possible in this day and age)? How about Ethernet. Any 10BaseT card out there can talk to any other 10BaseT card out there, in addition to any 10BaseT hub/switch/router. This is entirely done with standards by committee, not standards by mandate. (sidenote: yes, I know...the electricity flowing across those cables is "regulated" by the FCC, and your purchase of the NIC was probably "regulated" by the Commerce Department. The question is: would Ethernet be better off as a government-regulated system?)
Now, given the number of people on /. who are "pro-innovation", I think it highly likely that many of the people saying that regulation would be a good thing intersect with the "pro-innovation" group. It's unfortunate that the two proposals conflict. How? Let me describe this for you:
We consider an inventor to be an innovator. Let's say that I am an inventor, and I build a new kind of refridgerator. Wonderful little device, cools things much better than anything else out there. Let's say that I want to sell my little contraption, and a hundred of its brothers. If refridgerators are regulated, however (as they are...the cooling system in a refridgerator is regulated by...oh, I can't remember what agency. Probably a TLA, if I had to guess), then I cannot sell my little box. Instead, I have to submit its designs and probably a sample to a regulatory commission, and pay the regulatory fees and so on and so forth. This means I have to get more money together to do this, which increases my reliance on capital investors, and reduces the likelyhood of me going to market. Thus my innovation has a reduced chance of success. Chilling effect, if you will.
There are quite a few other reasons why regulation tends not to be a great idea:
One last thing: a common argument for regulation is expectation of service. The "post-failure lawsuits are not a satisfactory regulatory option" jab as in the above post is usual. Consider, though: a failure to meet regulatory requirements in one customer instance and a failure to meet a previous Service Level Agreement in one customer instance works pretty much the same: you sue for damages. In the regulatory instance, you have the additional leverage of putting pressure on the company through the commission, but an SLA violation case is much easier to try and damages are usually much greater than the cumulative effects of a lawsuit against a regulated agency and regulatory pressuring.
Oh, and in regards to the SLA you get out of an unregulated company vs what you'll get from regulation...take the SLA. Every time.
As usual, I could be wrong. If you think I am, I'd be delighted to see your reasons for thinking so. I've changed my mind in the past.
Hopefully the FCC will fast track this petition.
For those who remember The ACTA Petition, I do hope that this is something that the FCC does decide to rule on.
Gee wiz.. After about ten or twenty years of the regulation of internet voice communications,I bet we will get touchtone. Then they can start making it backwards compatible with rotary phones. Soon after that we will truly have a system of telecommunications that will be suitable for the masses.
Two "courtesy copies" must be delivered to ??? God, I hate these bureaucrats. They so need to be fired.
The truth is that the PSTN as we know it should be scrapped. Nowadays, they could only be more useful than a modern network in the event of a huge network failure, which would probably only result from incompetence on the part of the telecoms.
I agree on all madeus' points and ideas.
I'd like to explain why I believe the point of the telemarketers problem and the need for regulation on account of it, is irrelevant to VoIP communications:
An advertiser cannot to place junk mail in your mailbox/po box, without going through the regulated postal service. He can, on the other hand, dropping off something at your front door (or throwing it from the driveway, to get around the tresspassing issue). He's still disturbing you (and littering) and your privacy, which is illegal.
The same laws that are and will be signed against email spam, should exist for *all* internet mediums, from ICQ to newsgroups to mailing lists.
PS- In case you were wondering about it too: I think web site advertising could not qualify in this list, since it is privately owned property, just as you may display an advertising poster on your house (as long holds up in court as free speech)
My two cents,
Monchanger
The parent of this comment was I think Mozilla's password manager remembered the title of my last post and filled it out. Live and learn... :-)
- Is it appropriate for one IP application be regulated separate from others?
- Should voice communications, regardless of their medium of transmission, be regulated similarly?
These are both interesting questions that could be the subject of learnedTelecom regulation is intended to protect customer pricing and access to service. However, competition among carriers has brought service offerings so far above the tariff standard that almost no one pays tariff rates (around $0.25/min for long distance) for service anymore.
VoIP is another force which will ultimately drive down the cost of service. And like it was with DSL, there are some new players who have managed to get out in front with offerings, but at the end of the day, it will mostly likely be the established carriers who will benefit from VoIP. There is just a tremendous advantage to owning the infrastructure (and customer base) which, over time, is very difficult for a competitive carrier to beat.
I'd have to believe that every large carrier has a long-term strategy of increasing the percentage of packet-switched traffic on its network relative to circuit-switched. The idea of exploding the applications for their existing cable and infrastructure is just too compelling to do otherwise. This migration is a megatrend, and IMO it's not likely that regulation is going to significantly speed it or slow it.
http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/websql/prod/ecfs
Took me a while to find it, but maybe I'm just spacy.
I visited that site just long enough to sign a petition to repeal the DMCA(which I reccomend that everyone does).
My Blog
Well considering this, I am certain it should remain unregulated. However, as soon as it leaves the internet any regulations of the mode it enters should apply. In that way, it serves the best of both worlds, in that the internet remains free, and if it is used as a telecommunications service to call standard telephones the appropriate regulations would apply.