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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'm not sure how they will regulate it. The beauty of VOIP is that I can plug a phone in anywhere and get service as long as I have network connectivity. Of course bandwith, codec set, and any quality of service settings are very important as well.
Would the regulation be where the VOIP service provider finally does the TDM conversion for the PSTN fall off or would it be on the bandwith and such?
Personally my favorite VOIP product has to be Avaya's IP Softphone. Can telecommute over a VPN, and the sofpthone will override my desk set in my office giving me a fully-featured enterprise phone on my laptop. Just need to get a USB microphone for better quality.
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Free your mind.
They have been pushing hard to be in the middle of voice as well as data networks. To get there they need the legitimacy granted by government approval.
The big difference between VoIP companies like Vonage and the traditional phone companies is that Vonage doesn't manage any physical connection to its customers. The implications of that one fact are huge.
First, it means they aren't a natural monopoly. Anyone can start a similar business without investing millions of dollars in each community. The regulatory approach to a non-monopoly should be completely different.
Second, it means that taxes based on physical connections aren't appropriate. Vonage shouldn't charge for the Universal Connectivity Fund. Granted, there may be good reason to create a Universal Broadband Fund, but that would be based on charges levied by the ISPs, not by secondary service providers.
But private networks, like grand parents calling kids on the other side of the country. that will be harder to track.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
this affects me personally, as I just submitted the faxwork to cancel/transfer my landline # to my vonage account. For redundancy, I'm getting a new cell plan with more minutes. In other words, it'll cost me a few more bucks a month but I'm still saving heaps of money over the (landline) greedy monster-corp
Even with the new taxes I still feel much cleaner - kinda like when I dumped cable for my dish...
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.
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.
Once there is enough high speed IP deployed, we can bypass the traditional voice phone network entirely, and run voice over encrypted end to end IP connections. Imagine "dialing" in the form of domain names. The only reason the regulators are getting into this is because VoIP services are interfacing with the existing voice network. More work needs to be done to phase that voice network out of existance (which will be a long slow thing).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The whole reason why telephone providers are so closely regulated by the government is that the market for land lines is a natural monopoly - that is, competition is impossible because a competitor would have to install a redundant network, which is prohibitively expensive. So, since monopoly is inevitable, the government regulates it to ensure the providers don't take unfair advantage of the monopoly.
With VoIP, there is no monopoly. There can be dozens of different VoIP providers just as there's dozens (ok thousands) of pr0n sites or dozens of online bookstores.
When we have a new technology, why don't we rethink the way we regulate things instead of just applying the old regulations to the new technology regardless of whether or not it makes sense to do so?
Rank Presidents by th
Can someone show me just where in the Bill of Rights it talks about Corporations?
In all the law and criminal justice classes I have been taking these past 2 years, I always got the impression that the Constitution and, more specifically, the Bill of Rights defined:
the limits that the Government can infringe on the Pre-existing rights of Human Beings
Corporations are entities created by governments, and therefore have only the rights granted to them by those governments.
Now point me to a link that proves me wrong
Didn't Arnold say that the citizens of California were overregulated, among other things? Gov. Arnold will no doubt be more friendly to the free market than the Davis administration. Arguments, no matter if founded completely in fact, will not dissaude overzealous and unaccountable regulators from ignoring an easy power grab. The house needs to be cleared out.
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Send this to the Dave Berry one!
You pay your telephony/data tax/fee when you pay your ISP, you should not have to pay again when you use send one kind of bit/byte as apposed to a different kind of bit/byte.
If you do have to pay then you should be able to subtract the amount from the tax/fee you pay though your ISP.
Now the moment one of these DSL providers starts connecting lines to peoples houses or other locations then they are a Telco and should act like one.
I think this is more like a regulatory barrier to entry into voice communications or protectionism for the existing Telco.
It's just like the mafia. If you're making money, they want a peice. Even if you're not, they still had better get thier cut...or else. The only reason the Internet hasn't been taxes thus far is because it'd be too hard to enforce.
Powerful people expect everyone else to provide for them, and they always get more than they give. The only difference is that the government tells you what they're going to steal up front.
Well that was highly unpleasent, check the link before modding up.
I think the question should be "how on earth are they going to regulate it", not when. VOIP is just data on the network. How long until there's an open source VOIP solution widely adopted without centralized control?
It isn't going to be possible to regulate it without extensive packet monitoring.
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
I think your first point is off in tinfoil-hat-land, but I agree with your second point. I saw so many inititives and measures pushed thru behind closed doors in seattle after only a token guesture at discussion that these days I don't even bother voting any more.
It's not like they aren't going to do what the hell they want anyways.
If I could understand all the acronyms :)
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
The above link has moving windows which make them difficult to close. there are no backstories. I gotta say, though, some of the ... crap ... is inventive.
Trolling for karma since 2003.
Tinfoil hat land? Have you ever watched a press conference, to say nothing of a public hearing? Really.
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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.
These taxes were originally supposed to be temporary. It's high time that we got rid of them!
They have no place in the world of TCP/IP.
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
My only landline is VoIP. I work in a large organization - telephonically, we're closely coupled with Verizon.
In any case, VoIP hasn't been the smoothest road to go down. I've had relibility issues at my desktop, and the phones and back-end are often down/rebooted for "maintenance".
I'm all for no regulation, but one thing is for sure: the quality of service should be guarenteed to be as good or better than standard analog service. Right now, I feel I'm on the bleeding edge.
Don't get me wrong: VoIP is cool, and it is fundamentally different than typical analog service - so the same exact regulations need not apply.
But there should be strong rules in place in terms of quality of service.
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.
This is not a "use" tax. 911 emergency phone service is useful to everyone whether or not you have phone service. It should be paid for out of the general tax fund.
The government will try and add taxes wherever it can to supplement the regular tax base.
Anytime you see a special fee, surcharge or outright tax you should wonder why it's there.
Using broadband for telephone service is one area where the government has no business.
M
You better keep quiet about that one. Next thing you know, we'll be paying a fee to SCO for our telephones because there are *NIX routers at the call routing center.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Short Answer: Because VoIP is only superficially like telephone service in the sense that people talk through it.
The purpose of regulating telephone companies was spelled out explicitly in the 1934 Communications Act, the year the FCC was created:
"For the purpose of regulating interstate and foreign commerce in communication
by wire and radio so as to make available, so far as possible, to all the people
of the United States a rapid, efficient, nationwide, and worldwide wire and
radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges."
The whole basis for regulation was to ensure that rural customers (and independent phone companies) would pay about the same for phone service as people who live in urban areas, where the service is cheaper to provide. Rather than let the actual cost of the service create vast differences in pricing, regulation ensures more even pricing. In exchange for submitting to regulation, phone companies were guaranteed a profit.
None of this applies to VoIP in any way, because it is not a basic telecommunications service. It's merely one of many services available through the Internet. Someone might make an argument that ISPs should be regulated, on the same principle as the Communications Act, but the differences between urban and rural service pricing would have to be a lot greater than they are. To single out VoIP makes no more sense than to regulate any other individual service available on the web.
According to the CPUC's web site, you have to attend the meetings in person to make your voice heard. If you live around SF, make time to go to the meeting and let them know how misguided and ill-conceived VOIP regulation is. If you live in CA and can not attend, you can email your views to residents can send email to CPUC. www.cpuc.ca.gov for more info.
Wouldn't Cisco and other companies that make VoIP equipment have a vested interest in not allowing these silly taxes to happen?
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By and large, the criminals, I mean "legislators", up in Sacratomato are technical ignoramouses in addition to being generally unethical, self-aggrandizing vermin. Such a VoIP tax only serves to slow economic development, punish risk-taking startups out of business, and push VoIP service underground or out-of-country into complete undetectability. What will/can they do if I simply reconnect to the PSTN from Puerto Rico or Guam (quasi-out-of-country), Canada or Mexico? Nada!
And no, Aaahnold, isn't the answer. He's too thin-skinned to survive or be effective in Sacratomato. Gray's strategy is to "cocoon" which isn't much better. Ever notice how testy Arnie gets when someone teases him on something as minor as his accent - Wow! Very thin skinned. Clearly he's not used to people contradicting him or not fawning over him. All too similar to George W., I'm afraid. That lays the ground for unrealistic intentions and promises which end up being unfulfillable. Love him as a movie star - I have all his movie's on DVD; this is just too much of a stretch for him.
this is like taxing hotmail as a postal service. just because one technology covers the services previously only covered by another (ie. internet now covers what was once telco only) does not mean that they should be treated as the old entity. General Motors is not a horse-drawn carriage manufacturer. Nor is Vonage a telephone company. Damned stubborn politicians. They're not used to things changing so quickly. They'd better start getting used to it, and stop friggin complaining.
Speak for yourself.
The whole "VoIP as telecommunications or data service" argument come down to two main issues for me:
1) Is the service running over the ILECs/CLECs local network? If yes, the VoIP provider (Vonage, 8x8, etc.) should pay the appropriate fees (USF, access charges, etc.) to the responsible local POTS provider. In other words, PC-to-phone or phone-to-PC is a telecommunications service in the conventional sense of the word.
2) If the service is exclusively PC-to-PC (even if it connects to a VoIP-enabled phone), it should be exempted from regulation since it is exclusively a data service. Since the data never touches the local PSTN, there's no reason that the VoIP provider (and subsequently the consumer) should be accountable for access fees, taxes, etc.
Of course, this doesn't touch on the fact that the telecom carriers are saving a boatload of cash by sending their PSTN traffic over VoIP backbones all the while passing along new fees to their customers... That's a rant for another day.