Slashdot Mirror
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."
Is VoIP the same thing as these FREE (ad supported) PC-to-phone services which existed before the tech bubble burst?
Does this mean that states are not allowed to regulate VOIP until the FCC reaches a decision? Or does anything change at all?
Why is it the FCCs job to regulate a private internet. I can understand open airwaves that everyone controls, but the internet? I pay a private entity to connect to the internet, not the US government.
The reason for the FCC to regulate VoIP is that AT&T and friends have paid off some congressman so they won't lose thier market.
People, please vote Libertarian before we lose all of our freedoms.
Planet P Blog
www.enthea.org
If they rule for some kind of control over VoIP, then it's going to keep VoIP completely supressed, or high-priced. The local phone companies NEED some competition to make sure thier services don't get shittier and shittier, and the consumers need this to keep local phone prices low, and keep the internet free and open.
While I am generally in favor of free enterprise, I also do not mind a certain level of regulation. Regulation in the telephone industry is what allows you to pick up any phone, dial 10 digits and reach any other phone in the US. How would it be if you wanted to IM or VOIP your doctor and you are a Yahoo user and the doc is a AIM user??
Everyone here would laugh if the US Gov't tried to regulate ftp, http, tcp, udp, ip, etc. They have no authority over VoIP either.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
The simple fact is that if the FCC and the US Govt gets heavy-handed with regulating VoIP, it will go underground, just like file and music swapping did when they clamped down on it. VoIP is going to happen one way or another. Whether it's done rogue P2P-style, or above-board remains to be seen.
"I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up." -- Tom Lehrer
I wonder what that means for the end user.
. shtml ?tid=95 ).
It seems clear to me that they want to regulate VoIP, because it's the same application, only the transmission medium changed.
BUT... what does that mean to the consumer(*)? Am I allowed to run my VoIP applications or are they willing to control that also (like in panama, see
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/02/11/04/0252201
This can get just another privacy issue. Because the enforcement of thus regulations needs control of the traffic.
Are the traditional phone companies like AT&T losing? I don't think so. They are also providing internet services. They change become more an more
ISPs. They *are* ISPs. There has always been competition. Now the internet is stirring up the market a bit. So where is their problem?
Sometimes it seems that artificial problems are built up to get the public in favour of internet control (and the public is certainly there, now). Maybe not the population, but the ones that should decide for us. Maybe it's well-crafted lobbying.
(*) - Starting to hate that word. I am not only a "consumer".
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.
VoIP is nothing more than an attempt by the Telcos to try to hold on to a market that is naturally sliping out of their hands.
When one thinks about it, regulating VoIP is as stupid as trying to regulate chat programs; both are simply sending packets across and both run on off-the-shelf open-standards hardware and software.
I only wish lawmakers (who are _supposed_ to represent the public) notice this and realize that consumers should not be scammed like this.
I don't doubt that if there was enough money and motivation it would be possible to detect and block VOIP packets on the public internet.
It just seems that doing so what would require sniffers at all ISPs or somewhere to analyze, detect and block VOIP information. It would seem that this kind of effort would ruin the internet.
Then again, there's lot I don't know and I might be missing something obvious ...
Somehow I doubt that the FCC will "get it" and create a regulatory framework that makes any sense.
However, there are a few good reasons for regulations. Phone service is considered a "lifeline" service. Without it, people can die ("help! I've fallen and I can't get up!"). That's why there are surcharges to support rural phone systems and keep the price down, as well as mandatory 9-1-1 regulations.
Needless to say, taxing VOIP to pay for rural phones doesn't make a lot of sense today, particularly since the rural infrastructure is already built out.
However, most VOIP services don't support 9-1-1 calling, which can be a huge problem in an emergency situation. Reliability is dependent on the underlying ISP, which can be an issue.
The problem is that any regulatory framework needs to balance the needs of the industry to *benefit* the consumer. Granted those benefits may involve a trade-off (pay an extra $10 on the VOIP hardware to support a build-out of 9-1-1 bridges), but the benefit (emergency access) is supposed to be greater than the cost.
Unfortunately, I think most in the government forget that they work for us, and are there to look out for our interests. When the balance is off (more cost than consumer benefit), you get an overly regulated, stifled industry that doesn't provide adequate (or value-added) service to the clients that are paying for the service. More often, the entrenched businesses simply get more entrenched.
I fear that this is the political environment into which the VOIP will descend. There will be more focus on the regulation and less on the value that the regulations will bring to the consumer.
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
Personally, I think everyone is mis-reading this. It has nothing to do with the ILEC's and everything to do with the FCC maintaining its power base.
Most of the big players in Telecom have announced intent to carry the majority of their traffic, in the near future, over IP. No way the FCC is going to let the single biggest piece of its influence walk away.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Some years ago I tested VoIP and it simply sucked. It needed special hardware, headset, and was just plain annoying. But last week I tested Cisco's ATA 186, that has allows a regular phone to be connected to the network. I was astonished with the voice clarity. I called from Brazil to a branch we have in the US, and the quality was outstanding. No noticeable delay, nor echo. Of course there must be a delay (at least 87 ms, as a ping test averages 175 ms), but it's too low to notice in a regular conversation, and far smaller than in a regular international phone call.
Considering the company I work for spends about $3000/mo in int'l phone calls alone, after I showed it was cheaper and better, I was authorized to research and install it between our offices.
It's easy to connect 2 offices, but I wanted to do a little more... To allow our roaming users, from a cellular or regular phone, to call the local office and be able to reach a dial-out on the remote office, so the only chargeable phone calls would be local area ones.
Problem is: I have no idea of what equipment I should buy for this task. It'd be nice if the caller would be asked a pin#, and we'd be able to print a report of the calls later. The number of lines will be small, about 3 or 4. The equipment must be available in the US. Any tips ?
-
Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
VoIP doesn't need federal regulation. Being TCP/IP based, it fits naturally into the loose management model that serves the Internet so well.
If it ends up being so overregulated as telephone system, it will eventually raise the operational cost of VoIP so much that it eliminates the primary incentive of switching to VoIP -- cost.
Killing a promising technology at its infancy, smart move.
What bothers me about this is that it could make the internet open to being much much more restricted. Would video games that have built in VOIP now have to be able to dial a net 911? "That Fsking haxor is using a bot!!! arrest that 1337ass biatch!!" Would open source VOIP projects be canceled because they would have to register and pay a fee (though in net terms, that generally means it gets packed up and distributed from another part of the world so has minimized effect)? Same with free for private use ones like ventrilo. Having non-technically minded partisan people attempt to dictate technology is at best commical, and at worst scary. Of course the arguments about terrorism, drug dealing, and protecting children are going to be pushed. VOIP is way too general of a term to be considered as one technology. I doubt it will come to the point where someone who runs an encrypted voice server to talk to others across the world will have their doors knocked in by the fbi, but it could be forseable that they will get a huge bill from the FCC in their mail. Powell has so far been on of the most unconsumer friendly FCC leaders ever. His views on media consolodation and hdtv broadcasts were at a minimum shortsighted for the former and premature for the latter issue. The threat of consumers talking on the phone for way less than he thinks they should be paying is great. On the other hand, big businesses stand a ton to gain by unrestricted VOIP too. I do think there are some issues that should be addressed such as standards and spam calls. I do not think the FCC is the right body to be dealing with these issues. Probably the biggst threat to widespread adaptation of VOIP as a viable land line replacement is going to be the spam. It costs a lot of money to call someone on the phone say in the UK or USA from Nigeria and tell them to buy viagra or vicodin, not so the case with email and thus VOIP. Even if there was a fee for service model adopted, unlike land lines where if one wants to hack them they have to usually climb up a poll or do something involving wire cutters, with VOIP, the infrastructure is parked right on your computer. Hacking and spoofing will be issues too.
Wow, that one is easy, People can't rely on IM because US ISPs suck and that is a direct result of recent US regulatory effort. Broadband penetration is low and run by monopoly service providers who offer high prices and idiotic restrictions such as "no servers". Most people still suffer dial up, which is even less practical for IM. If the US had better ISP:
My non regulated GNU/Linux system does a great job of talking to any BSD, Mac, Unix or Windoze system without the first governemnt regulation. What was it that government regs gave you? Oh yeah, a 10 digit number you have to remember. Sure, like that never happens outside regulation - TCP/IP - caugh.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.