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California PUC Calls For A Public Hearing On VoIP
Vick points to this story at Voxilla.com, which says that "A California Public Utilities Commissioner has called for public hearings on the agency's recent demand that Voice over IP service providers apply and be certified as full-fledged telephone companies." The anti-regulation arguments, though, mostly seem to hinge on timing and protocol -- I wish more objectors would argue that there are already too many phone regulations, instead of seeming to promise a boatload more captured users (dollars) if we just let VoIP develop for a few years before unchaining the regulators.
First, let's clear up a definition issue here: The VoIP we're talking about here isn't the actual protocol, it's the use of VoIP to provide a connection into the PTSN, effectively it's POTS-over-VoIP.
POTS is a regulated competitve system at this point. You've got the ILEC former monopolies who now are required to bend over backwards to let CLECs into their interfaces. However, everybody in the POTS business is required to submit their payments into the USF, provide free priority 911 connectivity, and other basic things. What the POTS-over-VoIP services are trying to sell themselves as is a replacement to phone service that costs less, but they're making a lot of their cost savings by cutting corners on the services that the companies they're trying to compete with are required to provide.
That's unfair competition, and something the regulators need to step in on.
They already is www.skype.com from the makers of Kazaa. No interface to the PSTN, yet.......
POTS: Plain Old Telephone System
PSTN: Public Switched Telephone Network
ILEC: Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier
CLEC: Competitive Local Exchange Carrier
USF: Universal Service Fund