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California Demands Licensure For VoIP Providers

Posted by timothy on from the extortionate-troglodytes dept.

muonzoo writes "Looks like California will be wrangling up the VoIP companies and mowing them down. Or, at least licensing them. CNET has a story about state legislators' push for all VoIP companies in the state to carry a Telephone Operator License. CNET also has a quick blurb about Vonage and how they have recently started charging customers a 'Regulatory Recovery Fee.' Ugly stuff for a young industry." Here's our earlier post about Vonage charging the regulatory recovery fee.

5 of 265 comments (clear)

  1. Here's a link by Sir+Haxalot · · Score: 4, Informative

    to the same story on ZDNet.

    --
    I have over 70 freaks, do you?
    1. Re:Here's a link by gardel · · Score: 3, Informative

      Here's a better link to a much more complete story (that CNET clearly followed):

      http://www.voxilla.com/Article25-nested-order0-t hr eshold0.phtml

      --
      Marcelo Rodriguez Editor Voxilla.com http://voxilla.com
  2. Re:Makes sense to me..... by edstromp · · Score: 3, Informative

    Because the laws and such were originally defined with the understanding that there would be a monopoly on telephone services (or at least the line into your house).

    That is no longer the case. Especially with the internet, as you can get a connection by cable, dsl, satelite, wi-fi, fm, etc... It's a free market. Regulation (at least in this sense) is no longer necessary.

    And becides does it make sense to charge a company in NJ for this? All they have are customers in other states. They don't own any property or goods outside of their centraly located servers... which don't reside in your state.

  3. Vonage is NOT P2P by justMichael · · Score: 4, Informative

    With Vonage you can call ANY phone number you want, not just some other VoIP phone.

    And you don't get a "handset" you get a Cisco ATA186 that you plug any phone you want into.

    It talks to their servers becasue at some point it has to get injected back into the POTS network as an analog call.

  4. Re:California by Jhon · · Score: 3, Informative
    ...because he lied about the deficit. Not the taxes.
    Actually, it's because he not ONLY lied about the deficit, he lied that taxes would not need to be raised. Days after he was elected, he said: "Oh... that 4 billion shortfall I was talking about? It's really 30+ billion". Then he trippled car registration (tax). Then he talked about going to the California supreme court to remove the 2/3ds assembly/senate majorities needed to raise/levy taxes. Then he talked about raising the highest income tax bracket to over 11% (which in CA starts at $38k!). Then he talked about raising sales tax...

    Believe me... as a Californian, it's about the taxes and it's about spending money we don't have. If ANYTHING has come out of the recall effort so far, its that the surest way to PISS OFF the voters is to raise taxes to cover spending money we didn't have -- and it stopped most of what Davis and the legislature wanted to do.