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California Demands Licensure For VoIP Providers
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.
Yet another not-so-subtle attempt at increasing state revenue.
Stay away from my internet, dammit!
This is quite indicative of the business environment in california, and a perfect example of why the recall is (1) going forward, and (2) going to replace Davis with a Republican who's not afraid to protect business.
6 more days til the vote.
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Vonage also lowered the monthly fee, too.
I *really* don't want my VoIP service to wind up with more than 6 different taxes like my old Pacific Bell service did.
I pay PUC/etc taxes on my internet connection already. I really don't want to be double-dipped for my VoIP service.
Will IM clients like Yahoo Messenger, AIM, etc, which allow you to talk to someone using VoIP be regulated the same way, and be on the same fee schedule? This is another case (like the RIAA) of technology rendering certain cash-cow business models obsolete. These industries and the FCC/government (via tax revenue and fees) are accustomed to raking in cash for providing a service whose infrastructure is not only outdated but insufficient in many cases. I think for the first time in history we are seeing capitalism getting in the way of progress.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
How do extra taxes/fees protect us from wiretaps and fraud, and ensure any privacy?
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
With any luck, your off-hand joke will be reality.
California doesn't need any more taxes, we need to cut spending. That isn't going to happen with Davis, et al in power. Arnold or McClintock are the only ones who have expressed any interest in cutting spending.
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Do you sell your VoIP services to end users?
If you answered yes to either/both of those, then you probably are affected. If you're not a VoIP provider then I doubt you have anything to worry about.
I don't see this as as big a deal as the submittor of the article does. If a company is a telephone provider, regardless of the trasmission mechanism used, then they should have to play using the same set of rules/regulations as the other telephone providers.
John Leutza, director of the California Public Utilities Commission's telecommunications division. "They sure look like a phone company in nearly every regard," he said in an interview Tuesday. "This will be California's policy, going forward."
Regulators are typically of the same general mind set as monopolists, and in an earlier day they would probably all have worked for railroads. But while VoIP offers some of the same services as telephone, there are significant differences in the technology, as pointed out in many posts here. I don't think the current laws will support the CPUC position, but just like chumming for fish, where there is money to be had, the politicos will be swarming.
VoIP has a big potential to cut into the bottom line of some DEEP POCKET telephone companies, and you can bet these people's money will grease the pockets of the politicos in California.
This legislation serves two real purposes: winning over many Democratic supporters and interest groups and giving Democrats ammo to fire against Arnold when he repeals them. Note, the last reason is fairly typical of any political group.... Clinton signed environmental legislation that was extremely harsh, knowing that if Bush won he'd have to repeal them which would let Democrats call him anti-environmental (If Gore won, no one would care about him repealing the laws, as it didn't fit into the stereotype)
Recent CA laws passed include:
- granting illegal immigrants the right to driver's licenses
- enacting the nation's toughest financial-privacy and antispam measures
- expanding the rights of gay domestic partners
and coming up: requiring businesses with 50 or more employees to provide health insurance or pay into a state pool to purchase the coverage---Lane
What they fail to realize is that this is the Internet age. The location of a company hardly matters any more. If Yahoo chooses to spin off their VoIP division and move it to Arizona as a subsidiary, the end user wouldn't even notice.
Being the first state to tax something Internet related is a great way to drive businesses out of your state.
Overrated Moderation: This posts sucks... because.
If the VoIP transmission is coming across a telephone or cable company's lines I can see why they would want the VoIP companies to have to play by the same rules.
It's the same old story for the pols. They've always regulated and taxed telephone companies, i.e. those who transport sound from one phone to another. This is no different to them. They can't distinguish between completely different types of technology. The Internet is "new", so they have thus far avoided taxing the 'net because they've "never done that before". Nationwide, they even prohibited state sales tax from being collected on purchases over the internet. The politicians really are clueless. Enjoy it while it lasts because once they get a bite of the apple it will be all over and net taxes will be everywhere. Trying to reason with regulators over whether or not VoIP should be taxed and regulated the same way as traditional phone companies is like pissing into the wind.
It isn't, if you don't mind calls that don't have guaranteed quality, calls that are insecure, calls that may be tapped, no guarantee that you can port your number to another service, no guarantee that a 911 call will go through, no ability for a 911 dispatcher to determine your location, no ability for the operator to break into your call when someone needs to reach urgently, etc., etc., etc.
While we slashdot-type people can make a reasonable decision as to whether we really want all this stuff (and hence can decide rationally whether to pay for it), is it really likely that the typical consumer is really going to understand that this service is different from a regular landline telephone? After all, with some of these services, he's going to be using the same telephone that he's been using for years -- so he's going to expect it to work the same.
Yes, I hate regulation too. But if this stuff is going to be marketed as a replacement for regular telephone service, then it had better provide what the typical consumer expectes from his telco. (On the other hand, if it's marketed clearly just as a kind of "don't you dare depend on this for anything; I'm just pretending to be a telephone but I'm not one really" service, then you're right: it shouldn't be regulated.)
"and thats why we dont let Airline companies build airports."
So true. Sigh.
You are already paying tax and regulatory fees for your cable and DSL lines. Why should you have to pay them again for VoIP?
If you believe that, I've got some swampland in Florida that I want to sell ya.
No, really!!
Who makes the laws in California?
How is being the executive going to reduce programs?
Since neither Arrnold nor McClintock are willing to enumerate where they'd cut spending, perhaps you'd like to.
AOL Talk, MS Netmeeting, heck even Battlecom allow you to carry voice over IP. But the difference is you can't dial up you phone number from Battlecom and make your phone ring.
The VOIP in these cases are companies that tie into real telephone networks. They issue real telephone numbers to their customers. You can use a normal telephone to reach them. That means they are regulatable by the same standards as normal telephone. The regulators own the address space, not just the service standards.
The easiest way to avoid this regulation and fees is not to tie into the telephone network, don't use the same 7/10 digit address space and don't claim you can call normal telephones. You do that and there's no fees and no regulation.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
so i have to pay state tax on on my cable/dsl connection THEN pay again to use some of that same bandwidth as a phone line? That is making me pay twice for the same BW and connection.
The only way to bust a doper--is when you yourself become a smoker!
This is exactly right. I work for a police deptartment...how do you think the state funds 911 Emergency Services? Taxes on phones. Look at the bottom of your phone bill fellow Californians, there's a tax notice there that goes to supporting your emergency services.
If someone is acting as a PROVIDER of phone services, then the tax needs to apply to them.
Karma: Non-existant. Due mostly to the fact that you smell funny and nobody likes you.
Well, speaking as an amazingly naive person who isn't a CA resident, what I've read made it sound like the reason for the CA deficit was a vast reduction in capital gains and income tax revenue brought on by the collapse of the stock bubble and many Silicon Valley companies. Obviously, the concept of a "deficit" comes from spending money, so you can always chase your tail, but the fact that it hit all at once was at root a sharp reduction in income rather than a sharp increase in spending.
Some businesses are running out of CA. Some businesses are moving in. CA would be the 5th biggest economy in the world if it were a nation. No one can afford to ignore it as a market. It has problems, but it isn't the worst place in the world to do business.
I don't think that advocating basic health care is "providing everything for ... workers." Regardless of whether you think that the government should provide health care or not, the fact is that the government already provides health care through Medicare, Medicaid, state programs, and laws that require hospitals to treat emergency room patients whether they have insurance or not. CA is trying a solution to a national problem that will not go away, even though this White House Administration would like to. There are 43 million Americans without health insurance of any kind. What is wrong with trying a new solution to the problem?
As for the other things, they of course all sound nice... but in practice only serve to discourage business and drive away jobs. There's a limit to the amount of whoring out to business that a state can do without penalizing its own citizens. To take your argument to its conclusion, we should have slave labour camps, no minimum wage, and allow unlimited pollution on private property. Most people agree that there should be limits to the amount of exploitation that businesses have. As I mentioned above, right now small businesses are ignoring the health needs of their workers, which is variously burdening the workers themselves, the government sponsered safety nets, and the taxpayers that pay for those programs. I think it is reasonable to expect the free ride to end at some point. This isn't the particular implementation I'd favour, but it might work.
An elected government has a responsibility to represent the citizens that elected it, of course, and some of the citizens apparently feel that there are good reasons to take care of non-citizens. Speaking of amazingly naive, why do you think those "illegal" immigrants are in this country? Are they simply wintering here as a vacation? They are here because they do jobs that no one else wants to do. You can argue about whether that is a good thing or not, but that is undeniably what is happening. Some citizens, although apparently not you, feel that if people are going to be in this country, they should have to follow the same laws as the rest of us. That means that they should have a license if they are driving. A license also allows some method of allowing them to have bank accounts, which decreases the cash economy, in turn decreasing theft and criminal predation upon this population.
I like the way you call my post naive and in the same sentence claim to know the "reason" behind a bill in the state legislature. Legislation rarely has a single reason. Often it is a compromise. If a majority is required to pass it, and that majority is composed of people with differing agenda, then the odds are that they have different reasons for voting that way.
The most important point is that there has to be some limit on business, and that the limits CA imposes are reasonable if unpalatable to some conservatives. My favorite Bush argument is that the economy would be "a lot worse" if he hadn't been shilling for big companies and the upper class for the last three years. How would it be worse? Would we be standing in line at soup kitchens? Would we be building new dams? Eating each other and cooking our pets to stay warm? With his argument, he can do anything at all and claim that it could have been worse. No shizit, it could have. My question is: why isn't our economy better yet?