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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.""
Well, let's see... the Federal Government is in charge of deciding whether to regulate it... and the Federal Government stands to lose billions in revenue if they don't regulate it...
Well, I'm sure they will do the right thing.
And just how would they enforce any such regulation? VoIP is basically just a program running over existing networks. Cell phones not withstanding, you can no more require charges to be paid than you could charge for email or instant messaging. It's just a communications protocol!
Dyolf Knip
Thanks to some great suggestions by people previously on slashdot I have completely switched to VoIP for my phone service. It rocks.
Previously I had not switched because I was scared of losing 911 service. However, if you have wire running into your house, you can still pick up and dial 911--even without service!
So we have our emergency land-line phone--for free. Now we are using VoIP for everything else.
However, if VoIP starts getting taxes to death, then people like me will switch to something else... and then something else...
Can't the government just stay off these new industries long enough for them to get started?
Maybe you don't, but your carrier might. Qwest (or whoever) could take your analog call and digitize it at the CO, route it over IP to the destination CO, then pump it back out analog. Its cheaper for them.
There are also companies like Vonage, who provide phone service over your broadband connection. Some of my friends recently dropped their landline and now use Vonage over their cablemodem. They pay a flat fee ($40 i think) for all calls, including long distance.
blog
Do you consider universal affordable phone service to be a social good worth paying for?
That goal of universal phone service is possible only because of the current system of regulation. Regulation is an unfortunate term. It is really a system whereby telephone subscribers in populus areas subsidize subcribers in more rural areas. Regulation allows phone providers a consistent rate of return on their capital investment while keeping rates down for everyone.
The phone company does use a single phone line to connect each house/phone to the phone company. They use switching stations. Each switch station communicates to the phone company using an internet topology and protocols. Once the voice (data) reaches the phone company it is routed to either another local remote switch or put across the internet to another phone company. This is a simplistic view of the internal workings.
Now back to your question: Who uses the internet to make phone calls?
Answer: Everyone
A better question: Is there going to be a better interface for making calls?
Answer: Not much is simpler than dialing a standard phone, and getting a voice (automated or real) rather quickly.
Now for other issues: If the phone companies see this as an improvement. Ok, that would have to be for their bottom line. Then there is a chance that standard internet would cost the same as a standard phone line. And we would use a device to make phone calls. It would operate with all the same functions. And possibly have a nice color LCD window for viewing adverts sold by the phone company.
The cell phone companies are getting abit worried about these things. If I have an 802.11 device, and it has the capacity to make calls using internet protocols, then the only reason to pay a cell company is to ensure I am never out of reach from a cell network.
This is changing rapidly. McDonalds is offering WIFI at every resturant. Starbucks is offering the same. Other big names are trying to get into the WIFI field.
So there may come a time when major cities are covered by 802.11. And cell phone companies are pushed to the farms and areas without WIFI. This would be a huge dent in their wallet....
Now all if this is going to come at a price. The inital WIFI market is already fractured. My McDonalds account does not work with with Starbucks. And the voice provider needs to be paid as well. This is where the regulation will step in. It is possible that WIFI regulation will be the result of the FCC hearings. The guise will be to save the consumers money. And it will keep the cell nodes working.
This is just my opinion...
How will they track this, and how will they be able to determine if people are cheating?
OK, so they decide to regulate and tax Voice routed over IP. What about Voice routed over IP routed over some other sort of IP protocol disguised to not look like voice? What about Voice over IP routed through relays in Canada? What if two people are doing VoIP but then claiming "what, this isn't a phone conversation, we're just streaming each others talk radio streaming mp3 stations to each other."
This could become fascinating. We would wind up with this sort of caste structure being created among internet protocols, where this stream of bytes is okay and anonymous but THIS stream of bytes, the government needs to know about it and it needs to be taxed.. just because the latter set of bytes happens to contain audio data of a certain sort. So far the internet has avoided anything of that sort; certain classes of *content* have been differentiated from one another in a regulatory fashion, but never before a class of *data*.
Soon we may wind up with something where the proverbial "Joe Sixpack" pays relatively high fees on his Skype phone he bought at Wal-mart and plugged into the wall, while all the "techies" pay nothing to use their "alternative" VoIP setups. Meanwhile a bizarre cat and mouse game goes on, as the authorities complain about "speech piracy" and attempt to find ways to sniff out VoIP data or prevent "pirate" VoIP programs from connecting to the larger VoIP network, and the tech community comes up with increasingly elaborate ways to keep the authorities to notice what sort of data exactly it is that they're sending.
In the meanwhile, the ongoing effort by router companies to make "smart" routers capable of identifying things like streaming media packets and handling them in a slightly more intelligent manner is scuttled-- because 80% of all streaming audio data no longer looks like streaming audio data.
Anyone have a link to the RAT_PENIS.TXT story?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Can the existing network infrastructure handle the additional bandwidth that would be demanded, if significant, by VoIP?
How exactly does all of this work? It seems like the existing analog infrastructure would remain in place. After all, asking everyone to replace their existing handsets isn't going to happen anytime soon. Now the phone company will A/D my speech, then send it out directing it to another server local to the number that I dialed, which will D/A my speech and reproduce it for the ear of a person in another home?
If the above is true, it seems that it would make sense for some additional offering from the phone company that would eliminate the A/D portion of the communication and the phone line to your house would become a broadband connection. Make the handset perform the Voice-->IP conversion with embedded software, and I can ditch my dial-up ISP...
Well, from your prospective it shouldn't make a difference, other than with all the major phone networks either moving or having moved to VOIP, you should be seeing a large reduction in your phone bill -- at least for your landline. The phone companies are certainly seeing a large reduction in their expenses. The problem is, the phone companies are still charging you as if they were running their same old switched networks. Here's an article by Clay Shirky that explains this arguement much better than me.
On top of the phone companies' price gouging (IMHO), you are literally being soaked in federal, state and other fees and taxes. For instance, for my landline I subscribe to Sprint's Complete Sense Unlimited plan which gives me unlimited local and long distance (within the U.S.) plus a bunch of goodies for about $50 monthly. Yet my monthly bill often runs about $65. That additional $15 monthly is certainly not from using directory assistance (which is not about $2 a pop for me) or goodies not included in my plan. While I don't begrudge the 35 cents for E911 service and maybe I wouldn't begrudge the taxes either if I thought they were going to pay for something worthwhile instead of stormtroopers shooting and gassing innocent people in Florida. The FCC fees I feel are a complete rip-off. Either way, nearly 30% taxes and fees is outrageous!
Right now I am considering switching to Vonage for my landline. At $35 monthly for the same type of service plan I get from Sprint, and no added fees I think I can deal with any of the annoyances that might come with it. Now if I could find a good alternative to Time-Warner Cable for my broadband.
When telephone calls went from copper to fibre did the rules change? No. So why should the rules change because the calls are going over IP?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The issue here is that some companies, such as Vonage, are bypassing the "last mile" by providing service over a (differently regulated) Internet link instead. This screws up the service funding model which has traditionally used termination charges to subsidize/contribute-towards local service and fees levied on long distance companies who use termination services to "tax" (such as to fund the Universal Service Fund.)
It's a big can of worms, and rather more complicated than your average Slashdot psuedo-libertarian of the "Boo, big gubmint is trying to find new ways to tax me" type would like to admit.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
My question is this [and it may be a stupid one, i realize]: if the federal government is allowed to tax er, ahem, "regulate" VoIP, doesnt that open up other web-based systems to taxes as well? There has been discussion about small fees per email, or per page view. If VoIP is suddenly taxable, then isnt all data transmitted via a networking protocol suddenly fair game? Am I going to have to pay on a per-ping basis?
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!
I would recommend that anyone who is interested in understanding the intricacies of providing a telco-equivalent level of service to a residential user in an IP environment should take a look at the specifications at www.packetcable.com/specifications/. PacketCable(TM) is the cable industry's set of standards for providing telephone service over broadband. As you will see, doing VoIP properly is not quite as simple as some people seem to believe.
There are (of course) other ways of doing telephony over IP, but this set of specifications is free and easy to download, and the documents do give the interested a reader a good idea of the kinds of issues that have to be addressed.
The original poster very clearly said "they will", not "they do".
Many U.S. states have no sales tax whatsoever
Wrong. Not "many". Very few. Six or less, I believe. And I'm not aware of anything that prevents the state from imposing one in the near or distant future, or the federal government from imposing a federal sales tax. Name a state that has removed a sales tax. Okay, now name the states that have added them over the years. It's pretty clear what they will do, given a little time.
Every road you drive on isn't a toll road.
The trend in every state is generally moving towards tolls on roads. The big ones, the busiest ones, and the most expensive ones will come first, obviously. And perhaps heavy users or commercial users are hit first. But it all trickles down. Do you know of many roads that have had tolls added over the years? Okay, now do you know of many roads that have had tolls removed? Tolling roads is a clear trend, in all states. Technology only helps administrate this. Why don't they toll the smaller roads? Infrastructure too expensive. Would they if they could impose a low, fair price and you only paid for the miles you used? Damn straight. Is the technology there that lets them do that? Almost.
If there is something they can tax, they will. Just give them a little time...
minor detail: voice data is passed via RTP, which uses UDP, not TCP. Retransmission of voice data is generally not worth the effort, so the lighter-weight UDP protocol is more efficient...
They say that state and federal governments will lose tax revenue on these phone calls... But they also won't need that tax money to maintain the system that governs the older phone systems. Of course, my arguments assumes that almost everyone will switch over to phone calls via the Internet, but their argument also admits that enough people to warrant a change are already doing it.
With inner-city phone customers paying up to three times as much for basic service as their suburban neighbors, there is no sane argument remaining for the universal service fee structure.
When some ISPs took advantage of the access-fee legislation to put up modem banks and realized ROIs in the 400-500% range, it became painfully obvious that regulating the industry was bound to continue to fail in its objectives due to ever-present unintended consequences.
The most dramatic effect I can see coming out of regulating VoIP is hastening the demise of the public switched telephone network. Since the only value proposition offered by VoIP-as-service is quality guarantees and PSTN access, it will not be competitive with regular phone service any more, and bypassing the LD providers will continue to be possible by using direct IP-phone to IP-phone, which can't be regulated, carries no incremental cost to those already equipped with broadband access, and will continue to push PSTN rates up due to the loss of LD subsidies. The positive-feedback loop involved means that it is inevitable; we will see the trend accelerate as more standardization of protocols results in more network-effect value, more cheap phone devices equipped for direct Internet connection, and local phone service rates going up. Every one of these trends is already in progress and irreversible, and they all build on one another.
I know by painful experience not to try to predict when these things will happen, but they will happen, and soon. If my predictions were accurate, it would already have happened five years ago. But the basic economic fact is that it costs orders-of-magnitude less to provide communications using a ubiquitous packet-switched network, and only government regulation can slow it significantly, and in the current case may actually accelerate it dramatically.