Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
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.
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 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.
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.
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.