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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!
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.
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
You are already paying tax and regulatory fees for your cable and DSL lines. Why should you have to pay them again for VoIP?
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.