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Vonage Fights Minnesota's Attempts To Regulate VoIP
rmccoy writes "Vonage said Thursday it intends to fight the first-ever decision by a U.S. state to regulate companies that provide Internet-based phone services. Minnesota's Public Utilities Commission unanimously decided two weeks ago that the New Jersey-based voice over IP (VoIP) provider is subject to the rules and regulations that cover traditional phone companies."
Seeing how they're dealing with interstate communication.
When regulations there to protect the consumer do nothing at all to stop the one single incumbent provider but effectively eviscerate anyone attempting to provide the consumers choice or innovation?
I hate american "capitalism". (If for some reason you want to call it that)
I mean, this isn't about just "voice over internet".... it's about a phone service that happens to use the net.
So... either they should have to follow regulations like any other phone company..... OR... the phone companies should be released from their regulatory obligations, at least with respect to the voip providers, so they can operate on equal footing.
This seems fair. They are providing phone service that connects with the regular phone network, so why shouldn't they be treated like a traditional phone company?
this isn't offtopic! by "it's true" i meant that the facts in the article are accurate.
While VoIP (or at least, VoIP-connected-to-the-standard-telco-system) is pretty much the same as normal phone service, trying to apply exactly the same regulations isn't going to work.
For example, phone companies are supposed to track where phone calls originate (for 911 dispatchers, for example). That's not going to be possible with VoIP.
There should certainly be some sort of regulations, but simply saying "it's phone service, the same rules apply" is dumb.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
I use vonage as a replacement for my house line. I added a second vonage number for faxing and it works perfectly (except during the blackout).
I have a feeling that many of the things that make this service cool could be affected by this.
Like:
- Being able to have a number in any area code regardless of where you live
- Being able to plug your phone into any broadband line anywhere and have the same number you have at home.
Those are key and I can see them being screwed by this type of regulation.
I'm a satisfied Vonage customer, and I have to say that I really enjoy having a "phone bill" that is completely straight forward. I'm on the $25.99/month plan, and our monthly bill contains less than $1 in taxes. LESS THAN A FREAKING DOLLAR. How cool is that?
If the government starts getting their fingers in this business that is doing just fine competitively, you can bet that I'll start to see loads of fees and taxes being added onto my bill, turning my $27.00 monthly bill into something more like $40.00. And for what benefits? None.
Go Vonage.
Shameless refer-a-friend link to Vonage
Do not read this sig.
If your website contains animated gifs, you are required to get a license to broadcast television.
Oh you flatter me. No, I'm just your average /. reading open source advocate.
Governments (pretty much all of them) seem to be completely out of the loop and out of control when it comes to technology. Good decisions sometimes get made, but too often it seems they're just throwing darts at a dartboard, completely missing it and assuming that means Ban it or Tax it or Regulate it. And even if you like the idea of regulation for whatever it is, they always try to apply old rules to new things.
In this case, they're trying to treat VoIP as...a regular telephone. Charging them for the 911 setup? What? You want them to be a telecom and pay nebulous telecom fees, ok...why do these fees even exist? By the day I am feeling more and more lost in my own country. Or maybe it's just the world, no one seems to do it significantly better. on any kind of a regular basis.
This nation likes to call itself capitalist, but to me it just looks like a huge pile or regulation, largely designed to create monopolys but not really regulate them - combined with a ton of subsidies, kickbacks, whatever to already large buisiness interests that are also exceedingly anti-capitalist.
Ok to uh, keep on topic, this is ridiculous. VoIP is not the telephone. And why is this Minnesotas decision to make, shouldn't this be at a federal level? Seems like telephony has a pretty large interstate component.
If you connect to the net via the phone company (DSL or modem), you are already paying these taxes. Vonage and other VOIP companies are simply providing a service over existing telecommunications infrastructure. If they tax VOIP, you will end up paying the tax twice.
From the Vonage web site "Vonage is proud to offer 911 dialing. When you dial 911, your call is routed from the Vonage Digital Voice network to your local emergency service dispatcher."
In instances where a company is offering Internet based services that both compete and replace traditional services, it makes sense that such a service would be subject to the same regulatory control as the competition. In this specific case, if you replace your residential phone service with Vonage VoIP service, it seems both reasonable and a matter of public safety that a call made to 911 from your residential phone connect you to local emergency services. As a valuable community service, 911 is funded by fees charged to local phone companies. It seems unreasonable for Vonage to escape paying 911 and related fees that it's regulated competitors can't avoid paying.
Minnesota's Public Utilities Commission does not seem to be overreaching in this case.
Where things get tricky are services that don't outright replace residential or business phone services, but offer a quasi-phone service such as the voice services now being offered as part of some instant message services. At what point do these unregulated services cross the line where they become subject to local public utility commission regulations.
I wonder if the problem is cured if Vonage just stops offering service in Minnesota.
In a different field, auto insurance, most providers hate doing business in NJ because the state sucks - every 3 years the government gets a bug up its ass and changes the rules around because we have the highest (or near the highest) auto insurance rates in the country. So companies like State Farm, GEICO, Firemans Fund, etc have pulled out of New Jersey and do not offer policies here.
Sounds like a similar case brewing unless the MN PUC gets its act together.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Now, Vonnage and Packet8 will start to suck as much as the phone companies current regulated by the states. Qwest is sucktastic, and you complain to the state and they basically tell you there is nothing they can do...but, hey, they are regulating!
I mean, this isn't about just "voice over internet".... it's about a phone service that happens to use the net.
... even more ineffecient than government and arguably more ineffecient than communism itself).
So... either they should have to follow regulations like any other phone company..... OR... the phone companies should be released from their regulatory obligations, at least with respect to the voip providers, so they can operate on equal footing.
You ignore a fundamental difference. Local telcos own a monopoly over the local copper cable running to people's homes. As a monopoly they must be regulated, nationalized into a public works, or we are left with a monopoly market running amock (remember, monopoly markets are the least effecient
There is a huge difference between a company that essentially offers a software (or firmware) service over the internet that happens to transmit and receive electrically encoded voice data, and one which owns the local DSLAMS, the local copper running into your home, and can leverage that local infrastructure monopoly in an anticompetative manner if they are not regulated.
The idea that the regulations designed to hold a local telco monopoly in check should apply to a competely unrelated business that provides what is essentially a software service via an entirely different infrastructure (one that entails no monopoly, at that) is ludricous.
One hopes the law is written such that (a) this is a federal, not a state matter and (b) such that telco's are targeted, and broader software services are not.
Otherwise you'll see AIM, MSN Messenger, Jabber, and other services targeted the moment they can provide audio and video conferencing, and seamless communication with old POTS phones.
And that would really chill innovation, as much as any Microsoft monopoly could ever dream of.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Ending up with a situation where some packets sent over IP are taxed - specifically in this case a subset of packets containing vocal audio - can only lead to a situation where every single packet needs to be audited simply in order to track and log the taxable ones. That's horrendous enough - and so expensive to implement that even aside from the privacy implications it would cost much more than any revenues raised.
But consider, what's the difference between a packet of "telephone" voice and a packet of "Internet radio" voice? What's the difference between an Internet radio monolog and a conference call in which one party is doing all the talking? If two people listen live to each others' Internet radio shows, and converse thereby, is it telephony for purposes of taxation? If so, then when is Net radio not a phone call?
The only sane conclusion is: Vocal conversation over the Net may look like a phone call, but it's really something else. It may also look like radio, but it's really something else. Making Internet "phone" companies license themselves as real phone companies do makes no more sense than requiring a broadcast license of Net radio stations.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
It is rediculous to assume that because the service VoIP companies provide to consumers is similar to the service phone companies provide to consumers, the same regulations will work to govern them. In fact, why should VoIP be subject to regulation at all? The only reason I can think of is: if it is not regulated, it has the potential to destroy the market for traditional switched land-line service. But the question we should be asking is, is that a bad thing? Shouldn't we be moving toward a model where phone companies transform into bandwidth providers and voice communication service is provided over the same connection as everything else?
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Vonage mentions they are The Broadband Phone Company on their web page. If you are a phone company then you have to pay into the 911 kitty for that state. If the local phone companies pay for it, you better believe they will hit up those that don't. Vonage offers a 911 that calls the local police dept. Of course you don't get the address and it bypasses the states paid for official 911 service.
Competitors like Packet8 don't offer 911 service and stay away from calling themselves a phone company.
Clearly tho the agenda of the PUC's in PA and MN is to squash VoIP since it is a real threat. Kill it now before it gets to be a monster they cannot regulate and kill.
Hedley
Traditional telephone service has strict privacy regulations and lots of other (strange) rules such as the prohibition of the use of encryption devices. Nobody can legally listen to a plain old telephone service (POTS) call without a court order.
Voice Over IP (VoIP) uses the Internet as the common carrier. There are no such privacy rules on the internet. Anyone can legally monitor anyone's Internet traffic (including VoIP phone calls).
If MN wants to claim that VoIP service should be similarly regulated, then VoIP should be granted the same protection under the law that POTS has.
VoIP doens't mean "Any voice service on the internet". VoIP is a specific set of protocols for providing integration with the telephone system via IP.
What Vonage offers is a box that you plug a telephone into, get a real telephone number, and make real telephone calls to and from. It is no more or less a telephone than the telephone you use in your house hooked up to your phone company.. the only difference is the backhaul.
So.. rather than saying "Should vonage be regulated"... the question should be "What is different about Vonage that they should not be bound by the regulation the phone company is? Could the phone company start giving you a cisco VOIP box, a DSL line, and thereby avoid regulation? You bet they can't, cause they are the phone company.. why should Vonage be able to offer something the phone company cannot legally offer?
It's minnesota's decision to make because Vonage is offering phone service to Minnesotans.
With all the tragic consequences of deregulation all around us, how can anyone here at slashdot think keeping this deregulated is a good idea?
There is money involved here and we all know what that does. The government has a right control people involved in economic issues. The nation comes first, the interest of greedy people, second.
It's about time things like this started to happen.
First, I don't think outbound only service, often called PC to phone, should arbitrarily be considered phone service and regulated.
Second, I don't think PC to PC service should be touched at all.
However, from what I've seen of VonAge, they ARE a telephone company and should be treated exactly the same as a telephone company.
Consider, VonAge offers: 911 dialing, Keep your phone number (local number portability), in-coming and out-going calls, 3 way calling, call waiting, call forwarding, caller ID, etc. etc. etc.
What makes VonAge different from any other phone company service a local service area? They happen to use the Internet as the "last-mile" connection instead of leased or owned copper.
Unlike PC to phone service, VonAge acts exactly like phone service from any *LEC or RBOC.
I commend MN's decision to treat these people the same as they would any other phone company in the state.
I have not read MN's ruling, however, and if they also target PC to PC (or LAN to LAN), or PC to Phone, based services then I think they need to scale things back.
Just because something uses the Internet for some of its transport does not mean that it should be excluded from following the same rules and laws any other provider would have to follow for the exact same service.
. 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
It's as simple as that. Why the heck should I pay taxes TWICE on the same thing?
is let them be on equal footing. I'm not suggesting de-regulating the phone company.. just those aspects that compete directly with vonage offering voip service.
I'm not suggesting regulating vonage at all.. I'm suggesting that on some level what vonage is offering is the same as what the telco is offering, and therefore, they should fall under the same regulation with regards to that particular service.. and that very well may mean no regulation.. ie: let the traditional telco be flexible with it's local offerings as well.
I'm I the only one to become scared when stuff like this arises? Almost as frightening as ms ban on non-msn clients
I've had my land line replaced with a cellular phone now for quite some time. My bill is really straight foreward, the same number follows me wherever I go, I don't pay any long distance charges, and 911 maps to my local dispatch.
I don't know exactly how the government treats cellular providers but it seems to me that everything about the Vonage VoIP phones that is exciting all my colleagues applies to my cellular service. And because I live in Minnesota I'm really liking the stability of my cellular service's governmental regulation
Companies like Vonage really are only here for a transitional period: they give you a way to connect VoIP service to the regular phone network. That's not a long-term business model.
But for Internet-to-Internet calls, any attempt at regulation would be futile. In fact, there doesn't even have to be any kind of business involved in the middle.
States can, of course, tax IP traffic or Internet access, but regulations that try to distinguish between different uses of that traffic would be very hard and costly to enforce and trivial to work around.
It may have been said here or not, sometimes I don't feel like sorting through the FP's and other trollings.
Wouldn't this be a case of double dipping by the telco's being that they're charging you for bandwidth usage, along with an added cost to using VoIP?
Another thing I would like to point out, is telco's have deep ass pockets, as most of us know. Don't be fooled by their rants on not having enough money for yadda yadda, or being monopolized because it's political propaganda. Telco's who need laws passed often spend enormous amounts of money lobbying politicians to get them to pass these measures. It's definitely about time people got together and lobbied against this type of bs. Is everyone going to wait until the last second until everything is being regulated under some 3rd world like rules that make no sense.
MoFscker
The last time I tried them, they suffered from copious amounts of latency and delays. I had to repeat myself more often than not. Waste of fscking money at the time. Have they improved?
Now Vonnage must be overpriced, unreliable, riddled with billing errors, and have 30 minute hold times like the regular phone companies?
There is no law against the use of encryption devices for telephone calls. That said, the federal government has "encouraged" vendors of voice encryption hardware to restrict sales to the unwashed masses.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
This is double taxing and nothing else.
How about the point where they interconnect and exchange calls with the POTS network?
Talk only to other net phones, you're a net application. Interconnect net calls with POTS calls as a service to your customers and you're a phone company.
And when I say "as a service to your customers" I'm making a distinction:
If you're selling connectivity to the POTS network to general customers, suitable for replacing local phone service, you're a telco - whether you're doing it over copper, fiber, "cellphone" packet, 802.*, infrared, wires-through-wormholes, or what-have-you.
If you're selling a PBX replacement, hooking up a customer to his own lines for which he's ALREADY paying off a telco and the telco's tax man, you're an equipment/software vendor.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
State PUC's don't only create regulations as a way to collect tax revenue, they also ensure minimal levels of service is provided to customers, such as call clarity and 911 availibility. What happens when a call to 911 fails on the traditional system? In most cases, the phone company faces state fines and civil lawsuits. The RBOCs are forced to take considerable measures to ensure the system is as reliable as possible. What would happen if a 911 call through the Vonage system were to fail? Possibly nothing since the regulations that apply to the traditional service providers "doesn't apply here". The state of Minnesota is doing what it believes is necessary to ensure service levels are not sacrificed. It's about social responsibility.
Some may argue that Vonage is not a traditional phone company and the regualtions of the traditional system should not apply. But the fact of the matter is that Vonage markets itself as a phone service provider. Now they need to act like one.
This is just a variation on the desire for states to tax the Internet. As more of our daily commerce and communication are conducted over the Internet, I suspect the desire of the states to tax and regulate it, will grow from a whisper to an unstoppable roar. Frankly, I'm surprised the federal government has held off the states this long. Regulation and taxation of the Internet will be a messy, bureaucratic turf fight for many years to come. Let's just hope they don't destroy it in the process.
Grandparent uses the ol' slippery slope argument w/ regards to AIM and other chat services, but they shouldn't be affected, nor should long distance.
Everyone needs to take a deep breath and think before ranting about "Your Rights Online."
***
Radio Shack. You've got questions...we've got blank stares(TM).
" Just because something uses the Internet for"
" some of its transport does not mean that it"
" should be excluded from following the same rules"
" and laws any other provider would have to"
" follow for the exact same service."
Yeah, but that doesn't that it should follow the same rules.
Also, remember those OLD telcos, you know, the ones that wanted to charge different (read HIGHER) rates for DATA calls??
Use a modem and pay higher rates??
And what about that FCC LINE CHARGE?
THat goes directly into the pockets of the phone company(ies) and NOT to the FCC.
The scariest sentence I've ever heard:
"I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."
I live in a suburb of Minneapolis and office in my home. After dealing FOR YEARS WITH THE INCOMPETENTS AT USWEST (now Qwest) -- and most recently with Sprint for long distance -- when Vonage hit the scene I leapt at the opportunity to get rid of Qwest. Is Vonage my primary line? Nope. The vagaries of cable internet and crappy cell phone coverage in my area keep me locked to copper in the ground for my primary home line. But it has been rock-solid and easy to deal with...unlike the behemoth Qwest with their monopolistic practices and sh^tty customer service. I've thought for some time that Vonage needed to market their service as a WEB SERVICE AND A SECONDARY LINE and back off of the 911 service. Why? For the exact reason that has arisen: the regulators would position them as telephone service...not a web service. IMHO, the RBOC's absolutely resisted deploying DSL of any kind...since they were protecting their telephone monopoly. Why make broadband easy to get? It would only make it simpler for competitors to offer VoIP.
Vonage probably didn't contribute enough to the election campaigns of Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Attorney General Mike Hatch, like a traditional phone company should. http://news.mpr.org/features/2003/08/13_khoom_hatc hgop/
If they are offering the exact same services as a phone company, with the only exception being that they use the Internet for the last mile to the subscriber and/or use the Internet for a portion or all of transit, then they should be required to follow the same rules as a regular phone company.
Why should they (VonAge) be given an exemption just because they use the Internet for a portion of their service when the service they are offering is identical to a regular phone company? What makes them unique? I'm willing to change my opinion if someone can make a good point on how VonAge is really not a phone company.
Ah yes, the old "data calls require conditioned lines and you have to pay extra for conditioned lines". Yes I remember that far too well. The thread of SBC to implement higher fees for data lines was one of the reasons a popular multi-line "cb simulator" service went down in the mid-80s in the Houston area. In the end SBC was stopped, but they did cause problems for BBS operators and especially multi-line BBS systems and chat systems (cb simulator as the system was called back then).
Good or bad, and we know most telcos have been pretty bad, they should all be required to play on roughly the same playing field. They are still a regulated monopoly in most places. Any competition in most areas is mostly just for show and not real competition or a real threat to the telco in an area (there are a few areas with real competition, but not many).
There are lots of fees and "taxes" that go directly to the carriers. Look at the wireless LNP and E911 fees that are appearing on wireless bills. Those services were required by the FCC, and the carriers were allowed to charge for them. Except the few cents (to a $1 or so) that carriers are charging, per month, per subscriber, is adding up to MILLIONS of dollars, in many cases dwarfing the actual cost and giving the carriers a new profit center.
Yes, the system if flawed. Yes, the system needs work. Yes, telcos have treated its customers very badly. And yes, Vonage is a telephone company and should be required to act as such and should be treated as such.
. 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
I would say this is a classic case of Corporate Communism, where the government protects Big Business at the expense of Small Business and the Consumer Class.
I prefer to think of the the economic policies of the American Government (which Americans in our not so great wisdom have elected) as Corporate Communism, for lack of a better terminology. I don't think when government does so much to protect Big Business at the expense of all other of societies economic entiites, that capitalism really applies to the American Economic System.
HenryJamesFeltus.com
I had Vonage for 2 weeks. Everything about the service stunk to high hell. Nothing worked as advertised. Whenever you call or send an email, they open a "trouble ticket" and then you're completely forgotten about. Every time I called in to request status I was told it was misqueued. The final straw was when I opened a trouble ticket for the not working "stutter dialtone" voicemail indicator. A few days later I get a half-baked email from someone that says "I fixed it. If I didn't fix it, please let me know." I checked: Sure fixed it alright! Voice mail greeting got changed to a bunch of beeping tones. Email notifications stopped working. My voicemail password stopped working. And guess what? The stutter tone STILL didn't work! I called back and shut the god damn thing off.
Vonage, you guys have absolutely HORRID customer service and support. Stop the advertisements on TV. Stop turning up new rate areas. GET YOUR INTERNAL ISSUES ADDRESSED, then spend money trying to get more customers.
While I'm not a fan of big government, I think it's warranted and necessary to have someone watch over you.
Funny. In New York State (where I live), rural areas receive a much greater per-capita share of State and Federal Transportation funds than urban areas.
All forms of transportation are more cost-effective when you can take advantage of the massive economies-of-scale provided by crowded urban areas.
same thing for telephone service over cable. if it's an equivalent service, a fair market requires either all be deregulated, or all be regulated. otherwise, somebody is getting a subsidy. in the landline business, to subsidize one service off another is a federal crime. the only difference here is the choice of transport of the signal.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
No, good sir, I think you mean, "linux is teh sux." See, you have to use the singular form of the verb. Glad to help.
If they are offering the exact same services as a phone company, with the only exception being that they use the Internet for the last mile to the subscriber and/or use the Internet for a portion or all of transit, then they should be required to follow the same rules as a regular phone company.
They don't provide the same service simply because they don't drop a piece of copper into your house. That's the reason telco services are regulated in the first place, they have a natural monopoly which cannot be replaced.
Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to phish...
Telco started being regulated because they were a natural monopoly, similar to the manner in which a lot of "public utilities" were/are regulated.
First, I am not advocating the removal of regulations on telcos. Your correct, most do have a natural monopoly, especially the copper going to customers, and that aspect needs to be scrutinized and regulated carefully.
Regulations on telcos cover more than just rates. In many states they also provide a minimal level of service, provide a mechanism for customers to complain when carriers misbehave, and so on. Furthermore, the state makes some money off the telecommunications taxes the carriers are required to collect.
CLECs don't drop copper to your house necessarily. They lease their last mile connection. They don't have to, they could use a fixed wireless connection for the last mile. In fact, I believe there are several places utilizing fixed wireless for the last mile in stead of leasing copper. Are these companies phone companies? Should they have to comply with the same regulations for carriers, minimum grade of service, etc. as other telephone companies? If so, how are they different than VonAge?
VonAge is using an internet connection instead of copper or fixed wireless. They provide the exact same service. It should be expected that they be treated as a telephone company, and follow the same relevant rules and regulations. Of course, their copper shouldn't be regulated since they don't have copper, but that's about it.
. 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Point to Point calls enabled by traditional phone lines should be preserved, as carnivore can easily pick up all networked VoIP traffic, but snooping in on digital communications{Point2Point_VoIP} via traditional phones would be problematic.
How is American beer like sex in a canoe?
;)
They're both fucking close to water...
And yes, I'm an American. I just like to think I've got some taste in beer.
my cat's breath smells like cat food
CLECs don't drop copper to your house necessarily. They lease their last mile connection. They don't have to, they could use a fixed wireless connection for the last mile. In fact, I believe there are several places utilizing fixed wireless for the last mile in stead of leasing copper. Are these companies phone companies? Should they have to comply with the same regulations for carriers, minimum grade of service, etc. as other telephone companies? If so, how are they different than VonAge?
They still own (or lease, which is effectively the same thing) the last mile. With Vonage, the customer provides the last mile.
When the provider owns or directly leases the last mile, they can ensure that they get the level of service required to meet telco regulations in terms of minimum levels of service, especially emergency services.
When the customer is responsible for providing the last mile, the customer will choose the cheapest alternative available (cable/ADSL, vs a T1 w/SLA or other uptime guarantee) -- Who should be held responsible for maintaining emergency services and minimum uptimes and whatnot if the last mile goes out?
Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to phish...
Thanks for your comments. You make a very interesting point I had not considered -- the customer does indeed control and provide the critical internet connection to complete the last-mile connection used by VonAge.
This is probably why you see legalese about not using these services (including ISP services) in critical/life threatening situations in a lot of service agreements (or at least the ones I've read).
A balance has to be struck between the ability of the customer to provide stable connectivity, the customer's ISP to provide stable connectivity, and of VonAge to properly maintain adequate resources to connect to the customer. In this scenario, VonAge's only real responsibility for maintaining emergency services and minimal uptimes is within its network and its connectivity to the Internet, as that is all that it can directly control. If the customer has connectivity, and attempts to make a call, but VonAge's bandwidth is overly saturated, then that is where I'd see a problem with VonAge. Of course, how would a customer prove that is where a problem lies?
If a telephone carrier is required to provide certain measurements indicating service levels to a state PUC, then shouldn't VonAge be required to provide similar reporting appropriate to it's network? This is a hypothetical question - I've been fortunate to only have had a couple of dealings with PUC filings and other state regulatory matters, so I don't know all the details of what carriers are required to file, plus each state has different requirements, and I believe the FCC has some too.
. 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
I do not think that it is funny at all that we have a social tax and I have been fighting this tax as I live in a rural area and pay this tax twice. Read it for yourself the FCC has made it very clear for everyone to read.
And thanks to the discussion here I just ordered Vonage to use on my Cable Broadband connection!
My Phone Tax:
911 funding fee 0.50
Dual party relay 0.11
Interstate access charge 6.50
Federal excise tax 0.85
State telcom sales tax 1.6
Federal Universl Service Fee 0.60
Svc Provider Number Portablility Fee 0.36
Universal Connectivity Charge 2.66
Bill Statement Fee 1.50
Federal Tax 0.80
State and local tax 1.61
Regulatory assessment fee 0.99
TOTAL TAX 18.11
So I figured a guess at the total take from Verizon lines at 18.11 my tax * 12 months * 135,000,000 customers = 29,338,200,000 Rounding it off to the even Billion for 30 Billion dollars a year in Tax.
The 911 funding is just the cherry on the top of the s*it sunday that we all have to eat.
A VOIP "provider" at the core just offers a simple directory service!!
The voice data packets travel over the internet between the client applications!! As a rule, the VOIP "provider" is NOT INVOLVED in the call once the two (or N) phones have established communications...
HENCE...
It is impossible to meaningfully compare the services offered by a LEC monopoly with the simple software mapping / proxy / etc. services offered by a VOIP provider!!
The REAL "providers" of service for a VOIP "phone call" are (1) client 1's ISP, (2) client 2's ISP, and (3) the backbones over which their RTP packets are routed!!
Has anybody checked the crack these frosty old farts are smoking?? My opinions of white-haired Minnesotans is not bettered by this decision....
Let's fix this once and for all by locating directory and proxy services in adjacent countries not subject to the foolish laws of the country where the service is used!
They claim to have the right to eavesdrop and wiretap the communication.- They make you agree that the service can be terminated without prior notice if they believe that you did not adhere to their ideas of proper conduct. They claim even to have the right to charge a cancellation fee and they say they will give the material to the authorities if they believe it may be apropriate.
See 1.3 of the Vonage - Terms of service
At least in Germany, i think even in the whole of Europe, these terms would be immoral and thus void from the beginning. If they would do what they claim to do they would be subject to criminal investigation because of violation of elemantary civil rights like privacy of communication.
Shaking the head and frowning
The Terminator
The internet is a medium of communication much like any other except for it's rather unique position to communicate in MANY ways.
The federal government shouldn't get involved in this. If they do, they better regulate IM, email, and other comms methods.
Regulation to VoIP is foolish... they'd better start with MSN and AOL's IM clients then before attacking someone else.
I live in St Paul - Qwest is the epitome of "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company." They've put the axe above every possible competitor they could have - they've been stalling on the fiber they laid down for FOREVER. Our building had external wiring from the 60's, which wasn't replaced until our ISP (VISI, which I highly recommend) wanted to connect over the lossy wires. And our DSL line costs three times as much as our service. Something about this whole thing isn't right.
I always forget that Qwest is just another phone company to people outside of MN.
Why should 911 service be free? I'm not trolling here, I'm serious. I consider it a point of personal responsibility to know the ID, location, and phone # of the local police precinct. It's not hard. 911 should be 1.900.911, for some big flat fee, which would keep many of the cranks away. If someone calls on your behalf it just rolls into your ambulance bill (etc).
Think of first response as just another security service, or as just another health insurance service. What makes "first response" any different than the personal responsibility of after the fact clean up (which is not an entitlement, thank-you-very-much). The national 911 system seems to work very well, but it's just another case of government stepping in where a real market existed and spending our tax dollars rather than allowing industry to create more tax dollars.
I have yet to hear a single compelling reason for subsidising it for users at the expense of non-users, given the modern ubiquity of communications. I won't even get into "opt out"...
One of the justifications for meddling with land-line telcos in the first place was the defacto monopoly created by the need for copper everywhere, and the desire of government to spread communications. These old models no longer apply. It's a virtual phone. There is no de facto monopoly, therefore there is no need for govt meddling. Vonage provides a data service. Period.
1. Vonage does all the leg work to verify the physical address.
2. The number called by the Vonage network after you dial 911 is routed to the Central Office of the 911 center then to their public number.
3. The call shows up on the screen of the 911 dispatcher as Vonage but with your name and home address, and phone number as verified by Vonage.
4. The traditional 911 system is not used in the process either the 911 switching system nor the mapping system that each county must use in establishing service on POTS lines.
5. Vonage is going to win this one IMHO and the service is very good.
Beware! VoIP is just a series of protocols. If this passes, it opens a precedence for taxation of email, IM, etc. Your ISP fees in total would become absurdly high and discourage casual use. While this could get rid of the eternal September, that would spell doom for digital commerce.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."