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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.
I know this is kinda redundant... but does anyone know how much a phone call really costs? Here in the states we pay way more than most other countries... Traviling abroad showed me that. In fact calling home (Texas) from Greece, or Spain, is cheaper than calling from austin to san antonio... I mean really halfway around the world cheaper than a couple hundred miles. The only reason why it's so expensive here is that we have more regulations than other countries, and fewer telcoms. If the price was lowered to next to nothing, at least somewhere within the ballpark of what the costs are, then the govenment could reap large amounts of money, not from the high taxes but from high use...
I like replies better than Karma, even if they are flames, because that tells me I got someone thinking.
But allowing Vonage to poach the the phone customers in the bandwidth-fortunate territories will be the death of the USF...
The idea of the USF is to set one regulated price for phone services everywhere in the state, with the overage profits from those connections that are easy to serve in the cities being funneled into paying for customers that the ILEC phone company is required to serve at a loss in the rural areas.
If Vonage and friends are allowed to continue unregulated, the eventual end is that nobody in the easy-to-serve areas will be paying into the USF, yet the people who need the USF's support for phone service won't have the luxury of switching to broadband.
Yeah, Vonage is great for people who have broadband, but it does nothing for the people who don't. So, unless you have a solution to the digital divide problem, you've gotta pay the tax to help the unfortunate keep their phone service...
I worked on a major telco VoIP project and we were working with SIP as a real telephone alternative. Cisco was involved as were other vendors. The whole scope of our project was to replace analog telephony with VoIP with a reliable and clean alternative. VoIP traffic has its own inherent problems which the industry is still trying to resolve.
So, if the telco I worked for was trying to replace conventional telephone service with VoIP then why wouldn't it be considered a telephone service?
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
C'mon, a Public Utilities Board, who make their living imposing regulations telephone companies want to regulate telephone traffic, and everyone is surprised? PUC's exist because of a lack of competition. VoIP is competitive and therefore poses a threat to their existence. It is self-serving mission creep that they should extend their own charter by thinking that they exist to regulate all forms of voice traffic. What is surprising, is, that it took this long. It was inevitable.
figures /. moderators would not only mod this up, but give it some lame description like "informative".
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Your identification of who these companies are is wrong, and your justification of the legal issues is wrong also. You claim
"But allowing Vonage to poach the the phone customers in the bandwidth-fortunate territories will be the death of the USF.."
and you claim
"If Vonage and friends are allowed to continue unregulated, the eventual end is that nobody in the easy-to-serve areas will be paying into the USF, yet the people who need the USF's support for phone service won't have the luxury of switching to broadband."
Hello, have you looked around at those rural areas? Have you seen the great shape that our rural networks are in because the LECs receive USF funds? I got some phone switches to show ya.
I don't think the PUC has the legal right to do what they are doing. Part of the issue is over the ownership of the lines, but there are other issues. The definitions/concepts of USF vs the Internet structure, VOIP etc are two different worlds.
You also claim
"So, unless you have a solution to the digital divide problem, you've gotta pay the tax to help the unfortunate keep their phone service... "
this is utter BS. Read the article, the amount of subscribers these services provide is tiny compared to the amount of possible subscribers in the golden state. As someone in the article mentioned "whynow?". And why must we keep paying taxes for these "unfortunate" people who really don't get what most would consider "phone service". LECs don't upgrade their networks, their lip service PR plays seem to be just accounting tricks cause the switches aren't upgraded. When the LEC can't even provide operator service to detect what is wrong with a phone number, you know it is because the switch is soooooooooo old only ATT operators have the manuals on how that switch works...... I'm willing to bet you find this simple problem alot more common in those rural areas the USF is suppose to help. Want to bet?
Since LECs do receive these funds, the real "unfair" competition is forcing these new VOIP providers to cough up USF fees. There isn't even a real market yet to address the USF concepts in a future digital divide. This PUC test seems like a trial balloon like the LECs did before destroying the alternative DSL business. Anyone remember those independent DSL providers?
I've asked this before, I'll ask it again.
Maybe I'm being thick here. It seems to me that what we need for VOIP is a peer-to-peer protocol, and network cards/stacks that have a guarantee of service, where in this case, the service is time-based. Now if I'm not mistaken, the Linux 2.4 kernel has 'quality of service' flags for network traffic (including IPv4), and IPv6 has it built into the actual model! Now if this is the case, there should be no need for VOIP "providers," other than ISPs that don't explicitly deny a particular traffic type. Now this is all theoretical for real-time conversations, but in practice it's much easier--people use things like teamspeak all the time!
Can someone please tell me why we are looking to a centralised (and billable, taxable) VOIP strategy, instead of a direct peered (or even client/server) model? I honestly don't get it!
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Does my cable modem bill include the universal service fee? 911 fees?
What I am driveling at is that each phone call (line) should pay once. I don't think is is fare for the fee to be collected/recollected at each layer of the OSI model.
So if I use a dialup line to make a voip call or call a voip gateway with my dialup line should I be paying the same 30cents for 911 fee twice?
Some weak examples from the non digital world. You don't pay sales tax on a car when you buy it and then pay ex-size tax again when you register it. You pay once. And if you buy a car that never leaves your property (a pickup truck that is only used on a ranch) then you don't pay at all. Or another example is fuel. You are supposed to pay the tax where it is used. Thats why trucks have fuel tax stickers for all the states they are used in.
The rural poor, the elderly and disabled, generally qualify for Food Stamps, other governmental and private charitable food aid and distribution programs. Universal phone service made a profound transformation in both rural and urban life, it is the core of our modern emergency response system, don't expect politicians to abandon the principal anytime soon.
The same deregulation allows VOIP like Skype simply to take off without any questions being asked (so far).
If the US were to regulate VOIP and tax it or otherwise inhibit its implementation it will just shoot itself in the foot and hobble into the "human communication over IP" era. Europe, Japan and most of the rest of the world will find no fault in VOIP.
It remains to be seen if this is entirely true, former national carriers could try to make a last ditch effort but most of them are in such deep financial trouble that they really are dangerously close to bankrupcy.
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.