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Why VoIP Makes Telecom Regulations Irrelevant
An anonymous reader writes "BusinessWeek Online analyzes why state and federal regulators' attempts to label VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) a "telecommunications service" is wrong - and threatens to undermine the technology. It quotes Vint Cerf as saying: 'To single out VoIP as a telephone service is a terrible misunderstanding of the Internet industry. I would submit that, someday, the phrase Internet telephony will sound as archaic as 'horseless carriage' sounds today.'" We've also recently discussed Vonage's attempts to fight telecom regulation in Minnesota.
businesses that try to enact legislation which protects not only their interests, but a business model that is no longer relevant due to advances in science?
Get with the times, or get out of the way.
As I understand it all those "10-10-$NUM" services you see advertised on the television all use VoIP. My 5 cent (CA$) long distance (to
Trolling is a art,
The article focuses on why WOIP should not be held to conventional telephone's regulations because the technology involved is vastly different. However, to the end user, they just (or least should be able to) pick up the phone and dial a number. If VOIP is providing a functionally equivalent service, then they should be held to the same standards as conventional phone services. (Note: This is why Paypal gets to screw their customers regularly, since they are not regulated as a bank)
If Vonage et. all. succeed, it should be on the basis of providing a better product for less money, not by finding and exploiting loopholes in the regulations that are desinged to protect consumers.
OK...
I can do this. I am, after all,
a superhero!
The telephone companies had ISDN a *long* time ago and tried to rip-n-gouge money out of their subscribers; hence, the modem was invented as a way to circumvent that ludicrous system.
Of course, the phone companies tried to get modems banned. Or, at the very least, get legislation to charge separate access fees for those users because they knew nobody would pay such high prices for ISDN when they could make local calls ($.05, untimed in my area) and get reasonable (although slower) speed.
Now they're in the same boat. With the advent of technology that allows similar operation as the phone, but over the internet, they're scrambling to find ways to bring it under *their* control. I'm assuming that at this point, you don't need to be told why.
I'd expect this to go the same way I expect the Hydrogen Fuel Cell car to go in America with "Big Oil" resisting it... slow the adoption of the technology until a very large interest in it can be secured by the large corporations affected.
And *we*, the people, allow it to happen... write your congress person and tell them "hell no!"
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
Neither MCI or any other carrier is routing their calls via "the Internet". They're carrying them on internal networks over TCP/IP. That they share a common set of protocol and hardware infrastructure doesn't make them "Internet".
Indeed the closest this sort of inane statement could get to being correct is that some carriers might be routing some of their telephony and traditional data services over the same connections using the same hardware; hardly news and not at all what the article implies.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Actually Verizon is already trying to head off competition from VOIP services by offering a "Freedom" package (I don't know what the other Baby Bells are doing) which includes DSL, unlimited local and long distance for a set price (wireless as well.) I expect that this is to stop encroachment of VOIP into the lower end of the market (residential / small business.)
It's not free. You still have to pay for your internet connection, and it sounds like it has to be broadband, which is pricey.
If we communicated by way of dictating to people who tapped out messages in Morse Code... well that's a ton of overhead. It would be expensive. It would also be replaced by better and more convenient technology. As a matter of act, it already has! Meet the telephone!
My father is a typesetter, or was. Don't know what one is? Not surprising if you don't, because the job more or less doesn't exist anymore, thanks to the availibility and ease of use of computers and printers. Sticking letters on a printing press and designing graphics using proprietary business software has been supplanted by Photoshop and color printers.
The telephone as we know it is in danger of being replaced by newer technology. Welcome to progress. Check yer bags at the door.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
One of the reasons I got the VOIP service was the fact that I'm sick of being scr*w*d with by local phone companies. It's also cheaper, and the sound quality is better. (And hey - I'm a geek.)
I just recently moved. I had a cable modem installed in my new house before I cut off my broadband service at my old house. I unplugged the little Cisco box that my Vonage phone service runs out of and took it to my new house and plugged it in. I ran the phone cable that comes out of it into the nearest wall jack... et voila! My home phone service for my entire house just moved from one house to the next in 20 minutes with no hassles.
The last time I moved I was using Qwest. Instead of transferring my phone number from one home to the next in adjoining towns in the Minneapolis suburbs, they transferred my phone number to a town in Iowa and told me that there was no way that they could move it back in less than three days.
Anything that threatens to impede the growth of regular phone alternatives must be stopped. The traditional phone companies deserve to die a slow death if they can't get their heads around the idea of "customer service" instead of "self serving."
Quoth he
"It's all academic anyway..."
Phone taxes pay for emergency services such as police, fire, and ambulatory response systems and the 911 emergency call service. I think it's perfectly fine for VoIP users to pay those taxes as well, because everyone relies on emergency services.
The one reason that the government wants to treat VOIP as a telecom service is wiretapping.
CALEA requires access to telecom services, for just that purpose.
Traditional phone service costs me $20/mo for unlimited local calls -- and I can get a line for as low as $13/mo with restrictions on outgoing calls. So the VoIP product is more expensive and less reliable -- features are great, but for myself and many others, reliability and price are probably the two biggest considerations when choosing a phone service.
And this is before states impose phone taxes (yeah I know, it makes no sense from a geek standpoint -- but the fact is phone taxes as currently written don't make any sense anyway, and it's a revenue stream that legislators are going to ensure remains available). The only way I can see this business model making sense is if Vonage is going after the bad-credit crowd -- folks who've already had their phone service shut off and are willing to spend more money on a company in exchange for the benefit of the doubt. There are other companies that do this, too. Maybe you can make money charging high rates to a clientele that's likely to default on their obligations; I don't know. But it doesn't seem like the way to popularize the technology.
Differential taxation based on use of a single infrastructure is nothing new. Semi-truck drivers pay road taxes that automobile drivers don't, for instance.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
last summer when i was in Kuwait i called my girlfriend in GA using ordinary telecom initially and then using VoIP. The telecom service was almost 2 dollars per minute, so the call was brief and not much was said, whereas the VoIP i finally managed to get was 1.7 cents per minute using vocaltech, yes! one point seven cents from kuwait to georgia USA, and was just great; i talked to my girlfriend, whom i'd not seen or had a good convo with for over a month or more, with VoIP for over 3 hours first time i used it, and it was a heavenly feeling, omg it felt like being able to breath again, i had just missed home so much, my girl and my baby, that i just got tearful and then as the hours passed with me lying on my back in the dark wearing a headset i just felt sorta happy. That, i think, is what makes a technology, any technology, so wonderful.
Do you want reliable telephone service? Even if there is a power failure?
Do you want guaranteed availability of telephone service at uniform and reasonable rates, even if you live on a farm or in a slum?
Do you want 911 service that works?
Besides loss of tax revenues and control, there is a good reason for regulatory agencies to be concerned about VOIP. What if VOIP severely damages the market for conventional telephone service? That could result in the loss of universal and reliable, even if somewhat overpriced, telephone service in this country.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Taxes are supposed to pay for government services though. Taxing my analog phone pays for 911, for instance. Taxing my property pays for police and roads and sewer, etc. Sin taxes on alcohol or gasoline pay for the governments steps to repair the damage those products do (supposedly). Food isnt taxable, because the government isnt feeding me. Taxing my internet usage pays for - what? When the government starts slapping down infrastructure and pushing broadband out to everyone, then they can tax it.
I know the principle of taxation has spread to the point that every time money changes hands, the government gets some of it, but it's wrong.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
... whenever I see Vint Cerf mentioned on /. I get the urge to post pictures I have of him posing along with friends in these really cool thriftstore StarTrek shirts.
Apart from being a really cool geek he is also a really cool geek to me.
Sorry for the interruption, mod me down now please.
naah sig schmig
Voip in my view is a bad hack to make things cheaper. Here are some reasons I don't like voip and feel it should not be used for telco backbones. (I also have a list of good things)
1. With the recent worm activity, it just showed how much The net is vurnable to attack. I don't know about you But I want to be able to call people when my net connection is down.
2. Voip is traveling over a unsecure network. Meaning that the voip gateways can be spoofed, dos'ed, hacked, etc.
3. Voip is better equiped for use in private networks (meaning your home or small bussiness)
4. Bandwidth isn't set aside for voip session. Blurp's being hungup by a 'dos happy 13 year' (yah yah sure we will have ipv6 but its still on a unsecure network.)
Reasons why voip is cool.
1. Its not set on a single route.
2. Its fun to play with for a quick chat with a friend over the internet.
All and all voip is pretty cool But I don't want to see it intergrated into the public phone system. If the phone company's want to implement a decentrillised system then they need to colaborate together. To make a system which isn't prone to attacks.. what it comes down to is what QOS (quailtiy of service) that a new system can provide.. voip isn't going to provide a high enough qos for me. (there are reasons why the phone system has huge battery banks.)
Slashdot can handle a 5 second delay in delivering packets -- your phone can't. In short, while bits are bits, the method of delivery is different and needs to be paid for that way.
It seems to me that there's a fundamental difference of opinion in the purpose of taxation. Some people think that taxation is designed to keep government running, so government should continue to seek out new sources of revenue as old ones dry up.
Other people seem to feel that the purpose of taxation is to ensure that required services can be paid for. Sometimes these required services are for protection of residents (911, interstates, etc), sometimes they are to encourage commerce.
What value does the government bring to VoIP? If you can't point to any value that the government brings to this technology, then (it seems to me) that you have to admit that they're just trying to recover lost revenue.
> VoIP lets people talk at a great distance and travels over telco lines. And does not get taxed.
I beg to differ. I most certainly DO pay taxes on my DSL line (including the universal service fee). And since my DSL service comes from Speakeasy (via Covad) and my main line comes from Verizon, I'm paying these taxes twice for the same piece of wire.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Give me a break. Regulation did all right with the phone companies for a long time. The phone service here (in the US) is excellent and reasonably priced. It may not be extremely innovative, but that's not why we regulate things. We regulate things we want to be dependable and universal. That's why we should do for broadband what we did for phones. Broadband service has the same problems as telephone service and electric service: it is costly to go the last mile, and this discourages competition. So it needs to be regulated and taxed, just like phone and electric service. We can regulate and tax it to be universal, dependable, and reasonably cheap, just as we did for phones. Then we can have unregulated VoIP or whatever other services running on top of it, provided by unregulated companies in a free market.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
The entire purpose of regulatory bodies is to shape the market such that companies act in ways beneficial to the public interest, where absent regulation they would be inclined to cut corners for short term profit, setting up everyone for a disaster in the long run.
I think you're underestimating the consumer. I personally have decided *NOT* to choose VOIP over Verizon's $50/Umlimited plan, because I personally value the reliability of the copper network.
Many people, including my brother, feel otherwise which is why they opted to not to invest the local phone network, but rather their alternative broadband network (cable modem, wireless, etc.)
IMO, I think this type of competition is healthy for the Telco's and is forcing them to provide a better product. Even my mother understands that reliability is an important factor when deciding to replace your ILEC with VOIP, and despite the constant sales pitches from my brother, she still opted to stick with Verizon.
Don't underestimate the consumer.
(Not that we ALL haven't dealt with idiot customers)
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
If I had a copper line, how many times do I pay taxes for this wonderful privelage?
1) Income Tax
2) SSI Tax
3) State Tax (some states)
4) Insurance Deduction (taxed through the Insurance Provider, cost passed on to me)
5) Universal Service Fee
6) Line Access Surcharge (taxed and passed on)
7) Federal Tax
8) Long Distance Access Charge (also taxed and passed on)
9) ???
10) MASSIVE PROFIT!!!
Seems rather excessive that I am taxed at least three times on every dollar I make and spend!
Just my $.02 (after taxes from $1.00)
You can have it fast, accurate, or pretty. Pick any 2.
For a small business, or as a second line, something like Vonage is great. This needs to be fostered, not taxed, for the time being. Right now, I wouldn't be willing to pay a tax on Vonage because I don't get plain old telephone-style reliability guarantees - that's what you trade off for the bargain. Of course, the real problem is the reliability of the internet infrastructure and last mile broadband connections, which generally are just terrible (especially with DSL, which I finally just dumped in favor of cable). You just can't get reliable service over an unreliable medium.
I'm willing to pay all these taxes, if and only if I get real reliability and uptime guarantees (for less than 200 dollars a month, which is what these fucking thieves want to charge you for business DSL service).
I think the key difference here is that a VoIP-to-VoIP link is very different from a VoIP-to-Phone link. When somebody like Vonage starts selling a VoIP link that connects to the phone network, they're really selling POTS-over-VoIP. They're just using a substitute last-mile connection technology, and saying it's cheaper because they're cutting out all of the regulatory mess such as E911 that the POTS providers have to deal with. But, POTS by any other connection technology is still POTS, so they deserve to get hit with the same regulatory burden.
If you're gonna start handing out phone numbers and connecting to the telephone network, you better be ready to comply with the same rules all the other phone companies play by.
Packet switching in the next few years will begin to phase out 5ESS Switching which is the major standard today along with DMS 1000 by Nortel and other Motorola landline switches. With the full adoption of IPv6 your telephone # will be mapped to your phone's IP adddress to allow voice over packet data which is similar to VoIP.