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FCC To Hold First VoIP Hearings; Rules in 2004
securitas writes "The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will hold its first hearings on Internet telephony and VoIP regulation on Dec. 1 and plans to regulate VoIP by late 2004. A public comment period will follow the Dec. 1 meeting. Some say that it is overly ambitious to regulate VoIP by 2004, especially since FCC Commissioner Michael Powell does not have a strong reputation for clarifying complex issues - instead he has a reputation for confounding them. More at Internet.com and InternetWeek . FCC press release (PDF1|DOC1) and attached letter (PDF2|DOC2) to VoIP proponent Senator Ron Wyden, who sits on the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee."
No, it's time. Each email spam takes like what, a millisecond to send? But with VoIP, you have to deal with bandwidth (takes a lot more to send voice than text) and the time it takes to go through any obstacles. The caller has to navigate any menu system, listen to any "please leave a message at the tone" messages, etc.
Two paragraphs from the boardwatch website that i found interesting."
The immediate issues at hand are whether or not VOIP telephony providers should be subject to the same rules and regulations as traditional phone companies. And, if not, what kind of rules are appropriate for these providers. Key areas of debate center around whether VOIP providers must offer an E911 service, pay into the universal service fund, and enable government agencies to tap VOIP calls (known as CALEA-compliance) for homeland security purposes
Complicating the picture even further are the incumbent telecom providers that see VOIP as a giant threat to their installed business and are in no rush to see these services heralded into the mainstream. "The price of these new services is drastically cheaper, and the quality is almost as good," says Kelley Drye's Price. "It's a massive threat to the incumbents."
(this is not directly related to the FCC matter ; but this is a long overview of the Telephone situation in France...)
... So I'm eager to see how things are evolving with the FCC, to compare with what will maybe happen here in a few months/years :-)
In France, we always had a reliable, but expansive and blood-sucking telco : France Telecom. They are the only way to go for residential users who want a telephone line, and in most place, the only providers of DSL lines (there are some places where you can get Internet thru Cable TV, however).
The French ART (the Authority for Regulations of Telecommunications) however did enforce France Telecom to deploy a technical architecture to allow other ISP to join the DSL hype (to prevent monopolistic situation) ; so they did that - and people had to pay France Telecom to get DSL, and then an ISP to get Internet over their DSL line ! Two bills instead of one, great.
But there was a catch : it was France Telecom who was operating the data connection, so they could limit the bandwidth of the service, and also enforced some silly things (like a daily disconnection). So the ART pushed further, requiring France Telecom to allow other operators to put their equipments in wiring cabinets, and do whatever they want with the copper pair going to the residents, the famous local loop.
(Well, technically, they can't do whatever they want over the wire ; they only have access to the high frequencies. The voice frequencies are still operated by France Telecom, and there are filters (they call them splitters) at each end of the wire - like in regular DSL. But now, the operators can use whatever kind of DSL they like.)
So, one operator, Free (www.free.fr) decided to do funny stuff. For the price of regular DSL, they offered more bandwidth (roughly twice more) with a better ping (twice less), with a funny modem : the freebox. If you're starting to wonder what this has to do with the FCC and VoIP, here we are : the freebox, besides Ethernet connector, has RJ11 connector (for telephone), and a SCART connector (for TV). Those guys are planning to offer TV service real soon now, and they already offer telephone thru their network. Calling from a freebox user to another one is free ; and until end of 2003, calling from a freebox to anywhere in France is free, too. Calling a freebox user is low cost (local communication rate).
So, those guys are deploying an almost-free VoIP network. There must be a catch ; why are other operators not moving ? Well, not everyone can get the golden freebox. You have to be really close to the DSLAM (the telephone concentrator), and in a zone where Free did already install some hardware in the wiring closets. So, it's more like an experiment than a widely available product.
But I betcha some beers that when they go wide-scale, things are going to get messy. Because after wasting billions of euros into Orange (their GSM cellphone network), France Telecom really doesn't need someone to eat their main stream of revenue
Kudo's on your family's safety. You might want to contact your local telco to verify the information in E911 is correct. Screw up on their end could impact response time.
I use Vonage. Although sometimes the quality is sub-par, they were able to request my # from BellSouth and have it transferred to them. Also, they, as I'm sure others do, have the ability to link your address to 911.
Personally I'd roll my own asterisk server and utlize someone like VoicePulse for incoming 800# and local access, but in the event my net connection is down, so is incoming voicemail. Vonage handles that for me and the email notification.
Anyone know of a way to use an IAX or IAX2 provider and have them handle the PSTN termination and voicemail while allowing me to connect my Asterisk server to them?
put an asterisk server in each office, and you're 80% done. calling into the asterisk pbx and out to the remote asterisk is easy to setup, and you could even do access by caller-id instead of pin-code. by default, all calls are cdr logged as csv but it's possible to do it in mysql instead.
you can either use something like ata-186 (or the newer 2-port spa-2000) to connect existing analog phones to the asterisk server (or go for budgetones).
There are a couple of projects that do VoIP and PSTN/VoIP types of services. The one I use is Asterisk www.asteriskpbx.org There are others Bayone comes to mind. Both are GPL'd. There are a couple of companies that do "PSTN replacement" type of services. Packet8 and Vonage come to mind. Both provide a small device that you plug into your local network and plug a phone into and you make calls just like a regular phone. There are a couple of other companies out there that do PSTN/VoIP services that are a little more technical to set up. VoicePulse has both a business class service and a consumer class of service. There's also NuFone and StealthTelecom. The URLs for most of these companies are fairly obvious. There are also companies that offer only VoIP/VoIP service, FWD (fwd.pulver.com), and IAXTel both do this.
I really shouldn't have used someone else's email address for this account.