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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.
to the same story on ZDNet.
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
Yet another not-so-subtle attempt at increasing state revenue.
Stay away from my internet, dammit!
What if i do VoIP totally inside my company. does this sort of garbage effect me as well?
what about software suppliers.. ( both commercial and OSS )
etc etc.
( and no i didnt read it.. link didnt come up here )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Just because VoIP involves voice, that does NOT mean it's the same as telephone service. The monopolistic nature of telephone service (only one company can realistically have lines in a given area, particularly in the "last mile") makes heavy regulation and regulatory fees necessary. VoIP does not suffer from this physical limitation to competition, and thus any number of VoIP providers can exist in any area. This is yet another blatant attempt of government to cash in on an emerging technology.
*ducks, and runs for life...*
What about things like Voice IM? The standards for defining telephony are pretty loose. I talk to people (video conference, voice chat...) over IM all the time via Yahoo and Windows Messenger.
Seems odd to single it out because the lines already exist. I thought that the phone companies were regulated in large part because of the necessity of having only one line per house, rather than 20 providers digging up your town.
Don't most people already pay these access charges in one way or another via ISPs or other downstream providers.
I suspect that the politicians are much more stupid than we assumed. And I mean that.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
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.
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
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.
You are already paying tax and regulatory fees for your cable and DSL lines. Why should you have to pay them again for VoIP?
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.
it's OK when it stops you, but God forbid it ever touch me! Fairly hypocritical.
Well, duh... Are you new to Slashdot?
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Did I miss any?
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
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!