Vonage Starts Charging 'Regulatory Recovery Fee'

slavitos writes "Vonage sent an email announcing that starting with 'your next billing cycle, Vonage will begin to charge a Regulatory Recovery Fee of $1.50 per phone number. This is a fee that Vonage charges its customers to recover required costs of Federal and State Universal Service Funds as well as other related fees and surcharges. State and Federal agencies collect these fees from communications providers to fund public projects such as rural and library communications programs.' That could mean that Vonage is losing at least some ground in its battle against government VOIP regulations."

Comments

Psychology

[Wesley Felter]

Which would you prefer: "We're raising our prices, suckers!" or "We're not greedy, but we now have to pay the universal service fee, and we're passing that on you you"?

Re:I don't understand

[C10H14N2]

Maybe because voters have given governments (like Orange County, California) the right to dream up fees on unrelated activities (like speeding) to pay for their own mismanagement and bankruptcies (speeding causes bankruptcy?) or given them the authority to demand that cell-phone companies charge "local infrastructure" fees on their users just because they use a certain area-code and prefix. As an example, Sprint levies a local use fee of about $15 on me payable to the City of Long Beach, California while I live in Washington, DC not using a single atom of Long Beach's infrastructure. This is all the result of voting, be it yours or your rep's, not corporate greed. It should come as no surprise then that companies then charge you for fees resulting from our collective altruism and/or stupidity.

I would actually congratulate Vonage on itemizing it so you can then march into your representative's office and scream at them. If only every silly excise tax were so effectively communicated to consumers, maybe people would be more active in this "democracy."

Re:Why should the government control everything?

[westlake]

I thought the idea was to improve things using technology

and lifeline service/universal access, rural telephone services and library connectivity to the 'net couldn't possibly be ways to "improve things using technology?"

not tax the improvements so much that they're not improvements anymore

$1.50/mo scarcely seems so crushing a burden

Vonage _IS_ a phone company and should pay

[linuxtelephony]

I know it is an unpopular view to maintain, but VonAge IS a phone company, they market themselves as a phone company, they provide the same services as a phone company, so they should pay the same fees and treated like other phone companies.

Just because they are use a different pipe into the home than a traditional telco should not exclude them from complying with the same rules and regulations a telco has to abide by.

If you don't like the rules VonAge has to live with, then attack the regulations themselves that apply to all phone companies.

VonAge is decidedly different than "voice" features in IM programs, or even outbound only low priced LD services. VonAge provides full featured, two way phone service. You get a phone number, people can call you if they are not on the Internet, and you can call people not on the Internet.

They've gotten a free ride long enough.

Other services are quite different. IM programs communicate between computers, or in some cases the computer user contacts a phone # somewhere. Other servicse provide out-bound only network to phone features. And so on. Each of these provides _some_ functionality of phone service, but not the full package. Thus, they should not get hit with telco regs or fees.

It could be argued that out-bound network to phone long distance services could be considered a long distance carrier and should comply with those regulations -- but that would all depend on the details of the service provided. A blanket generalized statement would cause more harm than good.

One thing further, if these services are considered telcos, then they should also be given common carrier status. If not, then they should not be considered a common carrier. If they are not a common carrier, then it opens them up to all kinds of legal nightmares, responsibility for content/control, possible liability, and more. You'd think they'd want to be a common carrier. They should not be allowed to claim "common carrier" and be excluded from phone company regulations.