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Will FCC Regulate Internet Phone Calls?
Ridgelift writes "The FCC will begin hearings on Monday December 1st to see if they will get involved in regulating calls placed over the internet. Since a federal court in Minnesota ruled a month ago that calls delivered over the Internet are not subject to state regulation, Qwest, Verizon and SBC have all announced their intention to deliver more calls over their data networks. "The stakes in the debate are huge. Federal and state governments could lose billions of dollars in revenue from regulatory fees if calls moved onto the Internet are no longer subject to the charges.""
If there is something they can tax, they will..
Just a matter of when, and how much.. not IF..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"The stakes in the debate are huge. Federal and state governments could lose billions of dollars in revenue from regulatory fees if calls moved onto the Internet are no longer subject to the charges."
What will they do? Anyone venture a guess?
I would go out on a limb to say that the FCC would continue to try and not dabble in the internet's affairs.
Besides which, this medium should be free from government regulation, revenue loss or not.
I have two cell phones and a regular phone. Why in the hell would I want to use the internet to place a phone call? Sure, it's cheaper, I guess, but it's impractical. I know that third world countries use this method because it is WAY cheaper than using a real phone or phone card, but does the rest of the world really care? Are THAT many people using the internet that the government(s) stand to lose BILLIONS of dollars?
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
How could one possibly even detect phone calls? It's not as simple as in the "old, analog" world where it's like there's a phone line, that means there're phone calls.
An internet connection is used for many other tasks (be it web browsing or email or whatever) and one can certainly encrypt and/or hide phone calls so they aren't "visible" as phone calls anymore but just look like usual internet traffic.
Well, as telephones started becoming more and more a part of daily life, the systems that they ran on became taxed by the government. I see no reason why the government won't do the same with the Internet. Let's just hope that they do it intelligently (wishful thinking, I know).
Learn from other people's mistakes, you don't have time to make them all on your own.
"Federal and state governments could lose billions of dollars in revenue..." ...of which could made up if we spent an ounce less on military funding.
What stops them from "regulating" online conferencing, telephony (such as Skype), etc? That seems practically impossible unless the government starts monitoring the internet. Is it only going to involve telephones? What, really, seperates a telephone system (a traditional one) and a computer w/ a microphone?
Oh, but of course, the government doesn't understand it's own creation-- the internet. I think we've all seen that enough already...
---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
I don't know the specifics of the law, but from what I know about the FCC it was founded to regulate wide area transmissions right? Anything to do with radio that passes over public land.
/. readers of how many times we gave those servers beatings for matrix and LOTR trailers) Either they use magic, or their network has more bandwidth than a bittorrent.
Most of the internet now is not publically owned. AOL/Time Warner has some of the nicest backbones in existance (I don't think I need to remind avid
Which causes me to say, what gives the goverment the right to go after a company like AOL if they started providing phone services to it's subscription base. As long as AOL allowed other IP telephony providers to route calls into their networks, which was the community based resource sharing it's creators invisioned, then in essence it is a wide area transmission. If a node goes out, it reroutes.
It's a paradox. We can't have our cake and eat it too and unfortunately for most of John Q Public in the US, the goverment wants to be able to have evidence collecting power. We want privacy and we want a goverment that can defend us from scumbag corporations at the same time.
I think the FCC is a lone tomato rotting in the sun, skin blistering with flys buzzing about it, who's smell of decomposition just barely singes your nose. Regulation did not bring the consumer choice, which is why when deregulation came about the choice in phone service providers skyrocketed.
It's proof that less goverment involvement in phone providers results in better consumer choice. I for one am totally for letting any company do this.
This news is sort of old hat though, since many companies i've worked for over the years had IP based telephony for connecting calls between offices. I know a lot of the insanely big (like AOL/Time warner) have to use IP traffic for their voice data. Cisco does for sure.
Taxing some telco that decides to shunt calls over its private data network, or even the Internet, is one thing, but how do you begin with taxing a IP telephony call made directly between two PCs? What if only one PC is in the US, and will it matter which one initiated the call? How do you even *start* with something like Skype?
You could try to tax the telco and not the individual, but that is surely going to lead to a plethora of loopholes and tax dodges as the telcos shift costs onto their customers. You could try a flat rate "Internet tax", but that's going to create a firestorm in the voting classes, never a good idea if you care about re-election.
Well, I'm sure they will not do the right thing.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Nothing is black or white. If there is something they can tax, they will.., as long as they don't get their heads handed to them. Many U.S. states have no sales tax whatsoever. That dosen't fit your nice little theory. Certainly not all consumer goods are taxed. Every road you drive on isn't a toll road.
If you haven't fallen asleep yet, you might want to read an article on taxation. Accuracy not guarenteed, but hey, it's free and it's mostly accurate.
IIRC, phone taxes historically were created two support the poor (as phones were eventually determined to be a basic service that should be available to all) and later to support the 911 emergency location service.
I would be willing to support the frugal application of these two taxes to internet phone usage, except a little more broadly: 911 service given to anyone with an internet connection, and additional phone taxes to cover the cost of providing basic internet connections to the poor.
There may be additional taxes required to regulate the industry (support the FCC a tiny bit, etc) so companies don't completely fleece consumers.
But in the end, the reality is that phone service is so cheap, and internet service so cheap, that to complain about an additional $1/month or less in taxes is being petty.
What? It's $7.00 per month? Well then, fight to the death for your $82/year!
Of course the real issue is that the internet allows anyone to become a phone company overnight, even offshore, so collecting such taxes is going to be practically impossible. Best to go to the local ISPs, turn them into basic phone service providers put a small tax on the internet (flat rate per line/connection regardless of usage or bandwidth) and get rid of the concept of a 'phone company' or 'cable company'. You have connection providers and content providers. Levy the 911 and subsistance tax on the connection. Cellular providers will simply become ISPs, each cell phone a computer, the 'line' between counting as one internet connection. Each person will typically have 2-5 lines (cell, office, home, etc) Since content providers must have a connection, then they too will be taxed. Anyone can become a content provider.
3) Profit!
-Adam
Anyway, it seems to me that this industry is has now gotten started, so it becomes time for the government to step in and ensure that the people using it start paying for their fair share of the associated costs. Or do you think that 911 is really free?
Well lets see. Technically they're only charging fees so that they have the ability to do their regulation thing right? But they don't need to regulate. So why do they need the fees?
(I know the answer, I'm just making a point)
The current model, however, has the phone companies collect this tax from other subscribers, and most unlike income or property taxes it is arguably regressive. More importantly, the phone company has a large measure of control over the rate of basic service. This is usually done without effective governmental oversight as tarriffed services are negotiated between the telcos and the public utilities commissions. The decision makers in these same commissions are frequently staffed by current and former telco executives and management. I have exactly zero faith that the "tax" I pay on my phone bill to subsidize basic phone service accurately reflects what it costs to provide this service.
What blows me away is the Federal Government uses words like "revenue" when describing the taxes that they take from us, using the threat of a barrel of a gun to make sure we pay.
That's most emphatically not "revenue", which is money earned in exchange for goods and/or services entered into willingly by both parties.
If we've found a more efficient way of doing things, most especially because the older, less-efficient way of doing things was less efficient because of arbitrary additional charges, then why should we be punished simply because we can now do more with less?
But then I'm not a politician, I don't understand their doublethink.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
They either should remove taxes from my DSL bill OR from phone bill, because right now I pay two sets of taxes. They're trying to eat with two spoons, and this is not the prettiest way to eat, especially if someone feeds you. The fella giving you money may decide you're too greedy and cut off your food supply for good.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A200 32-2003Nov28.html
This is insane. Telecommunications carriers routing phone calls over the internet. This article doesn't even touch upon several issues.
1) Local companies can deliver long distance service (by passing Federal Regulation).
2) Quality of service.
3) Higher rates
4) More profits for the Telco's and higher rates for users.
Let me illustrate. The fees on your bill pay for the telecommunications infrastructure, in part by flat fee on your bill, taxes and some gets taken from each phone call. Now based on this premise, all companies will be routing over the internet. The possible/probable affects will be:
1) distortion on phone calls because traffic is high on the internet.
2) broken speech on calls
3) try calling 911 and have your speech broken up so that the other side cant hear you.
4) higher rates for everyone. Guess what, we all have to pay for the telecommunications network. Now the gov will not be making as much money for supporting the network. To maintain it their will be a raise in rates. Guess who's rates are going to be raised? Flat rate, taxes and per call usage. But what about all the money that the Telco's are making from this cost savings maneuver? That cannot be touched because it was not made on the regulated side of the house.
Now the telecommunications companies will not be governed by the FCC on phone calls. The FCC is the guardian that keeps the Telco's in check. Now there will be no check. Great, unregulated telecommunications companies.
I do not know how the government will tax this, but I am certain that it will not be well thought out or fair. It will be decided by who gets the most money and/or has the best lobby. In both cases, the average citizen will lose. This is how capitalism works: extract the most money you can from everyone. Kind of like a vacation at Disneyland without the fun.
VoIP is just a TCP connection, right? So in general is it even feasible to regulate (i.e., tax) VoIP separately?
If so, this brings up the interesting question of regulating other kinds of TCP traffic. Given things like VPN and SSH, it can be exceedingly difficult to even discover what sort of traffic is carried on a TCP connection. If my employer requires that I set up a VPN link to work, and I happen to have a phone plugged into my computer that uses the VPN to make work calls, how do the regulators measure my use of VoIP. It's just some portion of those encrypted packets going over the VPN connection, but that packets also include my vi sessions, rsyncs, ftps, and all the other things that I do as part of my job. Does this proposal mean that I'll be paying voice-line rates for my all-day VPN connection to work?
You might think that a wireless VoIP phone would be an exception that's easy to regulate. But my current cellphone is also a Palm Pilot, and I can and do use it for web access. Currently, voice and http on this phone use different low-level protocols, so they can measure them separately. But with VoIP, the voice and http connections are just TCP. I also work with databases, and much of that work is voice-like in that it has bursts of data alternating in both directions. Will this have the characteristics of VoIP, and thus be regulated/taxed as phone usage?
One possibility is that we'll suddenly find that all TCP connections are considered "voice" and charged extra. But we can probably all imagine the outrage this would produce - especially from people running commercial web sites.
Anyway, it'd be interesting to hear how they're going to sort out the voice sessions from the data sessions, when they're all just TCP connections.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I'm sorry, but if traditional telecom is subject to regulation, VOIP ought to be as well. The current regulatory scheme is set up, to some extent, to use local line charges to subsidize other services, in returns for some profit skimming. If we allow VOIP to bypass the local loop for high margin service (e.g. eliminating access charges for LD calls), then we need to rethink regulation.
When your significant other (or you for that matter) has a heart attack, you want to pick up that phone and call 911 and expect someone to pick you up, not to hear that, sorry, there is network congestion or a DDOS attack on the local router. Somebody has to subsidize telecom services for the poor. Etc.
It is certainly not fair to saddle traditional telecom with burdensome rules while exempting new players. At a minimum, the old players ought to have their regulations lifted. Of course, the slashdot crowd doesn't want that either. That would mean they would be exploiting their monopolies.
Quite frankly, I think the subsidies for rural telephone is a myth that AT&T perpetuated to keep its monopoly. "We need a monopoly so we can rob Peter with the justification of maybe paying Paul."
Farming is big business, if there was not a subsidized monopoly, you still would have seen a large number of rural cooperatives, and probably a faster evolution of telephony. In the end, the massive AT&T monopoly was proved overall setback, not a great leap forward for communication technologies.
Regardless of our interpretation of history, I think the wide number of options for rural users makes subsidies even worse. Farms are better served by wireless. There is less maintenance, they have the open bandwidth in the country, and it is more useful.
Costs of routing have dropped so dramatically, that the current tax structure costs more than the service, yet the government is addicted to taxes and will regulate just to collect taxes. They will justify their actions with anti-market myths like the rural phone gap. Don't give in to the game.
PS: If living in the city is more efficient, shouldn't we be encouraging people to live in cities. taxing city folk to give money to country folk ends up creating a market inefficiency.
You're here willingly. You can remove yourself from taxation by leaving. Unlike un-free countries, Americans are free to leave the country without special permission.
some of us would prefer to change things where we are instead of picking up and moving every time the local government does something stupid (which is all the time, really)
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Modded into the ground for speaking the truth.
I'll repeat my devastated post for those who would like to see it. .
Now. . . Please, if somebody would like to actually disagree with this. . . I would love to hear their 'logic'. As I see it, there is no rational defense of the corporate/government desire to tax and bill the bejeezus out of people through needless charges and needless regulation. And anybody who believes that the 'terrorist' nonsense is actually what it is being sold as, is a damned, damned fool.
But then I don't expect a whole lot of rational thought around here. Fear and Ignorance? Sure, but Rational Thought is a rare bird in these parts.
Self-deluding Cowards afraid to look at the world objectively disgust me.
-FL