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FCC Forum Divided on Future VoIP Regulation
ElCheapo writes "As the great philosopher Eminem once said, 'The FCC won't let [VoIP] be, or let [VoIP] be free.' In Washington today, the FCC held a public forum 'to gather information concerning advancements, innovations, and regulatory issues related to VoIP services.' Slashdot has seen numerous stories on VoIP regulation recently, but Tom Evslin, CEO of ITXC, brought up another point: If VoIP is over-regulated, it will not go away, it will just move to other countries and reach the point where regulation can no longer be enforced. With or without VoIP regulation, will a global P2P (PSTN-connected) voice network emerge? Will it start out as hobbyists setting up Asterisk Open Source PBX boxes connected to their home POTS line? Will some form of ENUM allow least cost routing to boxes sitting in basements and garages around the world? If an ITSP in Europe can setup an Asterisk box with PSTN access and start offering US phone numbers and vice-versa, will global number plans become obsolete? What effect will the ridiculously low barrier to entry for VoIP have on telecommunications?"
The FCC has already made up it's mind: it will hand over the business to the telco conglomerates. The little man has no say in this, these "public meetings" are all a charade.
No idea, really...stating that if the US over-regulates the tech will move overseas is obvious.
What I'm wondering is how far overseas they'll have to move. What are our Canadian neighbors doing?
Damon,
http://actionPlant.com
So given Debian, Asterix and a modem it's possible for me to set up my own (personal) VoIP line? er... I'm sure I'm missing something. Someone boil all this telco talk down for me ;)
With or without VoIP regulation, will a global P2P (PSTN-connected) voice network emerge? Will it start out as hobbyists setting up Asterisk Open Source PBX boxes connected to their home POTS line? Will some form of ENUM allow least cost routing to boxes sitting in basements and garages around the world? If an ITSP in Europe can setup an Asterisk box with PSTN access and start offering US phone numbers and vice-versa, will global number plans become obsolete? What effect will the ridiculously low barrier to entry for VoIP have on telecommunications?
Answer each question completely, citing examples whenever possible. Use the back of Slashdot for scratchwork if necessary.
The government's moral compass is controlled by GPS.
In times of crises, they alter it to suit their needs.
is a global voip network, and pots will become largely irrelevant in connected areas.
The need for pots to internet gateways is what holds us up now.. think of how things owrk once most people are all using voip.. suddenly, it's all software.. adn hooking people together for voice stuff no longer needs ANY kind of centralizing....
it won't be regulated, as ultimately, it can't be.
I don't really understand how any regulation on VOIP would work. Living in England, I speak to my family in Spain on a daily basis using VOIP. At the moment I sit down if front of a computer and use microphone/speakers. How long will it be until someone comes up with a telephone type device which you plug into your DSL modem?
How long until we start seeing the P2P-based net phone networks able to connect to POTS?
All it would take is one 10-10-whatever-like pay service where you call a node on the P2P network, then enter a real-life phone number, which they connect you to..
Someday, when all of Slashdot past/present/future can fit on a storage device the size of a thumbnail, some poor shmuck of a kid will decide to do his history project on a great philosopher on one his teacher never heard of. He'll google for "great philosopher", and you can imagine the downward spiral from there. Buddy, you can have the responsibility, not me. Congratulations.
FCC Chairman Powell Opposes Internet Phone Regulation.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
Sure, this could drive some VoIp offshore, but what they're likely controlling is the call itself. If the call originates or terminates in the USofA, then the call falls under FCC control and they will want their slice.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I caught briefly on CNN this morning that there's a company offering free VoiP as long as both users are using client software. Does anyone know who that company is?
It's something like Spyde or similiar.. maybe begins with a C, and has five or six letters...
With global networking technology, I think we'll be seeing a big change in telecommunication service in the coming years.
What this comes down to is companies suddenly realizing they are set to lose market share. We are rather successfully using iChat AV to remotely collaborate from N. America to New Zealand, but here is the deal. We are already paying for access to the Internet out of our grant indirect costs to the university. So are others that are paying to have access to the Internet from their homes and businesses. If the major phone companies have not been on the ball enough to see this one coming, perhaps they need new boards of directors or CEO's as voice over IP has not been an overnight phenomenon. Furthermore, the government should not be stepping in to attempt to rescue companies that have not been smart enough to adequately compete. Right? Is this what market consolidation and deregulation done for us?
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
We may finally get fair pricing for long distance. I don't really see the point of long distance fees. It is not like the phone company had to walk the call there. Voice calls are routed along side IP packets, the only added cost to IP traffic is some grandfather clause letting Telco companies still gouge us. Besides, in Canada at least, most Telco networks were already paid for by people owned companies, so I do not accept cost recovery as an answer either.
Will it start out as hobbyists setting up Asterisk Open Source PBX boxes connected to their home POTS line?
Asterisk is in 4th place or later because you have:
Gnomemeeting - works today and interoperates with Winblows.
Vocal - Cisco is behind this SIP implementation.
Linphone - there may even be a working windows version. (can interoperate with Vocal)
And even Bayonne interoperates with more platforms then Asterisk.
The only thing holding VOIP back is the FCC deciding who gets money from it. I mean, the only reason the US isn't using solar power exclusively is because nobody's found out how to run a sunbeam through a meter, right?
The telcos are scared that this will make them obsolete, so they HAVE to find a way to make a buck off this.
Allow VOIP to be unregulated (you can't really stop this anyway). If it causes the phone companies to start losing money then they raise prices to compensate, and our home phone lines cost more.
I don't know where most of the revenue stream for telcos comes from, but if it is from long distance phone calls - then they need a new business plan. Those days are over. If they are spending too much money to keep the internet working then they need to raise prices on access to the internet lines and the price will rise at our ISPs.
I think the real problem is the stupid white men are seeing their business replaced by better technology and they are crying to Sugar Daddy Bush to help them out. New technology almost always means business die.
RIP phone companies.
"Rapito ergo sum" Hey, why not toss that in to further confuse the kid and his teacher? Yes, apparently this philosopher Eminem gave birth to that essential truth "I rap, therefore I am"
"The bigger the lie, the more they believe." - Det. Bunk
Well, the fact of the matter is that he actually sang "The FCC won't let me be, or let me be me" so the quote should be "The FCC won't let [VoIP] be, or let [VoIP] be [VoIP]". Is this the part where I get downvoted for quoting song lyrics, even though they were quoted (wrongly) in the title?
Yeah, there is far too much rescuing of poorly run companies, or businesses that have simply run their course by lobbied governments. In my city (Calgary) they are passing a new law to make it very costly to own cars older than 1990 on the premise that these older cars are causing most of the pollution. I am sorry, but I fail to believe a 1986 Ford Escort produces more emissions than a Cadillac Escalade. I think the slowing auto market has more to do with this decision. Natural Evolution works great as long as we quite poking at it.
Tax something else like air or water.
But not speech. It's protected.
When will the FCC wake up and realize this simple idea. A bit flowing around the internet is the same thing whether it is part of a webpage, streaming video, or VoIP. Wanna clean stuff up? Clear out all the rules and make the regulations standard regardless of the type of data being delivered.
"My head hurts, My feet stink, and I dont love Jesus." -Jimmy Buffett
Given this, the quote has absolutely no relation whatsoever to the topic at hand and you sound like a jackass. So, why'd you quote Eminem again?
-Matt
Duke '05
Once you have any data stream over IP, it is pretty difficult to regulate, since it can be disguised on varying port numbers, encryption (which is probably a good idea anyway) and other techniques. Regulation tends to work on the big conglomerates, since they operate so much in public. A homespun underground cottage industry movement is very difficult to control (see P2P). Therefore I find the discussions about regulating VoIP rather irrelevant.
if you surf around your own link you eventually get to this is anyone willing to help me out in the purchase of an Impeach Bush Lunch Box?
Look, at the end of the day it's all the same anyway.. If you've got something they want, you can tell them what to do.
So don't be surprised they're making you and I fall in line. If you were smart, you'd be doing exactly the same.
Bowie J. Poag
The point is not the revenue for the companies, it's revenue for the government. It simply isn't fair that the telephone companies are regulated, and so pay (albeit minimal) tax while the VOIP companies are not. Both providers should be heaviliy taxed, regardless of the money in hand for the corporations and their shareholders.
Stop corporate
"So the FCC won't let me be or let me be me, so let me see." is the ACTUAL lyric in question, but never mind... ;)
VoIP is an itch that some people need to scratch and therefore it will happen (well, it *is* happening). To me the question that remains is whether the teleglomerates are onboard or not. Saith the people: You are either with us, or against us -- otherwise you'll just have to lobby the regulations so deeply so as to hinder voip usage/access.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
For non-telco-speaking Slashdotters..
POTS = Plain Old Telephone System
PSTN = Public Switched Telephone Network
Right is wrong when left is right.
All this talk about bridging VoIP with the phone system. I dan't care about the problems with that, I don't want to do it, I have no interest in it, and if somehow telemarketers start hitting me up on VoIP over it, I'm gunna go Bun Bun on them.
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
Soon they will realise that voip is just another part of the internet and that they should have been regulating the whole internet all this time, then they will realise that actually the internet is just another form of human communication and thus speech and writing should be regulated. I propose a pen ownership license, and law enforcement needs to be aware that people might try and use their own blood as ink for lack of a pen. Also we need to divide up the audible sound spectrum and sell it off to the highest bidder, er humans can speak on 200 to 400Hz aslong as they own a general oparating license, dog whistles are classed as a low-power consumer transmitter.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
We've gone from a nation of individualists to a nation of selfish individuals, all crying "Me! Me! Me!" to a government composed primarily of short-sighted, ignorant persons concerned only with placating the short-sighted, ignorant masses.
Our government has, therefore, become adept at siphoning money from us all in a manner that is least likely to attract negative attention (think payroll taxes). We all know the real purpose of VoIP "regulation" is to protect an outdated telecom business model and the tax revenue it generates, but until we are all willing to make some sacrifices, the downward spiral will continue.
- Providing a cheaper service to the users.
- Make higher profits to screw consumers more.
I'm betting on #2 tactical donations.Yes, I've said it, and here's my reasoning.
Consider what you need to do in order to get an analogue voice line: you call the phone company, answer a few questions, wait a short period of time (usually a few hours), and plug in the phone. Bang, you have a phone number and can call your mom. Ludicrously simple, and you don't need a child of five to do this.
(Yes, that's right, the old WC Fields axiom has been reversed - the more complex stuff amongst people who can't figure it out are best left to five year old children.)
Now what do you need for a VoIP line? A broadband TCP/IP connection. On a DSL this is redundant, so the cable companies are left with that option - and unless you are just wanting to blow money (or you really need reliability or uber speed), you probably don't have a T1 or better in the home. More or less simple (a quick rewire of your cabling), turn it on, bang, you have a phone and, again, can call mom.
But wait a moment. What of the twelve-o'clock flashers? You know, the people whose VCRs and similar persistently flash 12:00 because they don't know how to set them, or the people who need the tech support guy to tell them how to turn the computer on. These are people who don't understand the concept of RTFM, so they can't be bothered with how to pull a plug out of one hole and put it in another hole for fear of doing irreversable damage. Yes, you need a child for these people, but these people trust their own children even less with technology. Dead end.
The point of this is that, unless the telephone companies make radical changes in their hardware, VoIP will probably only have a small niche market amongst people who can figure out how to wire their own stereo, which (and this is strictly theory) seems to be the vast minority on the 'net - and then again, many of these people are probably not even *on* the 'net to begin with, thus excluding them from VoIP entirely. But they'll probably ask anyway.
This sig no verb.
Haven't tried it out yet myself, but 3.3+ Megadownloads can't be wrong.
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
What can they do about this? It seems to me that they would be nicely positioned to take over telecommunications for huge chunks of the U.S. population.
Obvious problems might include language issues, and a funky regulatory climate, but that isn't any big deal.
I'd really like to know, if screw it up here in the U.S. what will Mexico do?
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
Nahh.. that already happened to my post
-Matt
Duke '05
I think the main reason VoIP isn't going to take over global telecom is the fact that in many places the infrastructure is lacking. In the Caribbean -for example-, a lot of people still prefer pots because voip on dialup results in... well, crap.
Disclaimer: No, I actually have not rtfa.
What, the welfare check wasn't big enough this month?
1. Tunnel VOIP over an SSH connection.
2. Call it VOIPOSSH.
3. Or SVOIP.
4. Or GNU/SVOIP
5. Submit article to slashdot.
6. ???
7. Profit!
It is called emissions testing.
:)
I have a modded 87 Mustang that would be subjected to the restrictions there in Calgary.
Through diligent and careful tuning my car has emissions like that of a new car combined with an average gas mileage of about 26mpg. (Best part: 315 RWHP, 2700lb curb weight.. or about 1.5 times the RWHP of most performance sedans, half the weight of a medium-large SUV, and twice the gas mileage of a larger SUV).
My car should is tested to the same emissions standard. (Here in ATL it is) If it meets the requirements I can continue driving it, if it does not I have to make it so or spend some amount of money attempting to make it so. Any other regulation is simply silly. For all the goverment knows I could put a brand new LE engine in my old beater car
Jeremy
The internet has already started to show it's power to fundamentally change everything that has to do with our society. All the media middlemen will vanish now when we all have direct connect possibilites with each other. The Record Companies will die since iTunes Music Store's don't really give them an job to do at all -- all you need is a computer and you can buy music out of the box. That we're losing another middleman here, the telephone company, is nothing suprising since communicating through the computer is just another form of media.
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
If ever there was a technology begging for IP v.6 it's VOIP. We supposedly have an impending shortage of IPv4 addresses. Seems like a logical solution considering the infancy of this technology.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
From the Vonnage website.."You can still use your computer to surf the web while you are using the Vonage phone services; it's easy to use. You merely plug a router (If you do not have a router Vonage can supply one) into your Cable/DSL modem. This lets you 'divide' your Web link. Then, simply plug your telephone adapter and computer into the router. This lets you use the telephone and search the Internet, at the same time."
Excuse me douchebags, but I have DSL and I ALREADY surf and talk on my phone At The Same Time. Are we forgetting the Bandwidth stuff once again? Not only that, I talk VoIP and surf and chat locally on my phone. What a retarded "selling point". Sounds like a cable company television advertisement. "No need for a second phone line with Time Warner Cable Services". Disinformation dot com.
I listened to some of the FCC discussion on CSPAN, and with all the mindless "let VOIP be free" perspectives being spouted here, let me raise a few of the more valid concerns I heard with letting VOIP go completely unregulated (and forecasting a dramatic drop in POTS usage as broadband spreads and people use it for phone):
1. Emergency use:
VOIP will not have the level of reliability of POTS, especially during natural disasters and other emergencies. In theory an IP network can be made just as reliable, but the simple issue of powering the phones is a big issue... the phone system generally has been significantly more reliable than the power system. With a VOIP phone, you're dead if you lose power. Traditional phones keep going.
This may seem like a small issue, but an example cited during the hearing was a major weather-related power outage in California, where the utility determined after the fact that customers were less annoyed by the fact that the power was off than the fact that the phone system at the power company was not equipped to give them good repair status information. People count on the phone system, and it needs to be there, especially for 911 emergency use.
2. Funding and effectiveness of 911
The 911 system is funded by POTS and cellular surcharges. Even a 25% drop in POTS usage due to VOIP would be disasterous from a funding perspective. And remember that when you call 911 from a landline (and in more and more areas, cellular), they know where you are. VOIP is extremely far away from having any sort of location capability.
3. Funding of Universal Access
Everyone in the country has access to phone service, no matter how rural / remote they are. This has been a tremendously important program, but would have funding problems similar to 911 if a big chunk of POTS goes away.
Anyway, my point is that despite how "retro" POTS is technically, it has significant merits that VOIP currently does not provide. I'm not suggesting that any of the problems described above are unsolveable for VOIP, but I think it's awfully unlikely that "market forces" will magically provide the answers. There needs to be some regulation in order that the good in POTS is preserved going forward.
This story's poster probably should have read the articles before concluding that the government was on the path to regulating VoIP out of existence. Most of the FCC's regulatory leanings on this seem harmless to me.
See the opening remarks.Mostly harmless leanings:
Chairman Powell: No regulator, either federal or state, should tread into this area without an absolutely compelling justification for doing so."
Good - looks like they are trying to avoid stopping the technology with excessive regulation.
Commissioner Michael J. Copps: Wants to ensure 911 access. Quite an acceptable use of government regulatory authority. Hard to see how this could be a burden on VoIP systems.
Not mostly harmless
Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein: His first point was to bring up the concerns of the DOJ and FBI that they might have trouble wiretapping VoIP. Aside from the civil rights concerns, one can image many technical problems with this:
1. FCC mandates that US based VoIP firms provide a means for the DOJ / FBI to listen in.
2. VoIP firms outside US jurisdiction don't bother carrying out this mandate.
3. Those with something to hide use foreign VoIP firms.
On the whole, it looks like the current direction is not towards stifling over regulation. I don't see any signs of prostration to big monopolies in the chairman's or commissioners' remarks. Nonetheless, it's certainly advisable to let the FCC know your opinions and concerns to ensure that the eventual FCC conclusions are well-informed.
My motto: "A cat is no trade for integrity."
First of all, what about the regulations which mandated performance expectatiuons. Phone service has traditionally been viewed as an essential service, some of these regulations stipulate uptimes for phone networks, etc. etc. The net effect of these has been that the consumer expects the phone to work, reliably, every time. VoIP providers (other than the big telecomms players) by and large will not be able to meet this expectation, or rather will be at the mercy of infrastructure they don't control, and organizations they have no binding agreements with.
Some of these regulations have also made it unlawful for private individuals to tap each others phones. (This being a right reserved to the government, who supposes they own the electrons involved anyways...) Without the private networks owned by the telcos, and the regulatory controls placed on those networks, wiretapping becomes a skill that the current generation of script kiddies can master in three hours. It's all data folks, it can be diverted, copied, folded, mutilated, spindled just like form data. Sure it can be encrypted, but there is some fairly significant overhead involved, without crypto hardware, I think you would notice degraded conversation quality.
Besides, do we really want to offer the marketing organizations a way to converge SPAM and telemarketing?
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
Expect prices for IP access to go up when this happens. Whatever the cause, the providers will always find a reason to raise the prices if they can.
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
I wonder why wireless operations were spun off from ATT and why Sprint has a tracking stock for the wireless side of the biz. Maybe as a safety net if VoIP is not put under control of the telco conglomerates either via FCC opposing such a move or through a technical inability to control such software. It is not a sure thing that the telco conglomerates will control VoIP.
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
Has the FCC outlived its role?
If you go trawl the www you'll probably find that the FCC was set up to ensure that telecommunications got rolled out effectively across the USA. I doubt the original intention was to control telecoms for the benefit of the telcos.
Maybe, in this age of more-or-less global and ubiquitous telecoms, the FCC has completed its role and is no longer relevant.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Proponents of USF will point to the benefits to schools and poor people. But what of the unseen? What was not purchased because of these fees? What job was not created because a product was not bought? What medical invention was not created because the job was not found?
There are millions of dollars of wealth given to people or organizations who could probably obtain the service if they really wanted to. Rural people already pay less in rent than city folk. Poor people have other choices for being in communication with others. When was the last time that calling the police stopped a crime in progress? Do we really need subsidized 911? Government schools were having trouble graduating kids that can read before the internet was mainstream. Do we really need subsidized computers in the classroom?
If the services this fund provides are so important, wouldn't people be willing to donate to the fund voluntarily? Wouldn't people be willing to provide something in exchange to have this service? It's not a market failure when people don't act on your ideal. That's called a failure to persuade.
Let's honor the right of people to set their own terms for talking. Don't force the issue through an agent with a gun. Keep VoIP free of regulations, fees, and taxes.
I disagree. A few years ago, I would have agreed with you, but the 12:00ers have proven that if they see enough benefit they can learn just enough to get what they want. P2P networks, CD burning, cell phones, and email are just a few examples of what people who have no technological ability can do today. I know many people who cannot find the power button on any computer but their own and have no hope of setting a VCR clock, yet can burn CDs full of MP3s they've found on Kazaa, etc.
GL
But the barrier to entry is a lot lower, you don't need a multi-million dollar infrastructure to run servers, but you do to run that same distribution empire in the B&M world.
If I encapsulate voice over IPX and then tunnel that to a remote location, is that VoIP? What if I define my own layer-3 protocol and use GRE tunnelling to connect with the remote party? How can you form a clear definition of VoIP let alone regulate it? If you don't use a well-known protocol, there aren't even any tell-tale signatures that a sniffer could look for.
I am surprised that no-one has yet noted that opportunistic encryption is a very simple "solution" to this issue, along with a host of other related problems.
Many people, myself included, object to "smart network" architectures. I dislike networks in which intermediate devices such as routers and switches provide a host of value added services like Quality of Service, tracking Napster users, or taxing VoIP traffic. I prefer network designs in which "smart" end nodes are linked together by "Big Dumb Pipes".
The best way to preserve this type of architecture is to start deploying point-to-point encryption on a massive scale. The network can only provide value added services if it is capable of understanding the traffic that you are sending.
My only problem with free VOIP is when the phone lines start degrading. As much as I hate my over priced, inflated phone bill. If 40% of their customers go to the free service, who pays for line maintenance and how? These same lines deliver the web. Does that mean my access charge will double? Something to think about.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
taxes will get paid. If all the phone taxes go away other taxes will rise to replace the shortage. If VoIP is so cheap and great it will replace regular phones, without a tax break. Seen any telegraph poles lately? Wireless may replace it all. The best solotion will win. VoIP can pay the same taxes as everybody else. If that sinks it, it was not that great. BTW if VoIP is not regulated some of the protection your phone has goes away. Bad Sevice do not care. Wiretapping? Not illegal. 911? Nope, better have the police on speed dial.
Heh, that's a clever trick to post a link to your first post that got modded down so it can be seen again. That's doing an end run around the modding system, which many Slashdotters would say you should live with it. In your case, though, I agree with you--pretty unfair mod.
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
I always thought the question at hand was whether to regulate COMMERCIAL VoIP and it's providers, not voice over internet in general. I mean, that's the only thing that makes sense. Regulating VoIP between two end users over the internet is just bullshi* because all it is is another data transfer, be it digitized voice or whatever, its all data.
The POTS telcos are regulated, but if I string copper from my house to the guys house down the street, will they start regulating me?! I don't think so.
And even if something as absurd as government regulation of end-to-end VoIP ever came into practice, couldn't we just encapsulate the SIP or H.323, or whatever voice protocol into another protocal (or even encrypt), then how could they even detect we were transmitting and receiving voice.
A good piece from Grant Gross of the IDG News Service posted on TheStandard.com... "But others at the forum questioned whether VoIP vendors would include services for the disabled, for example, or pay access fees for connecting to the traditional phone network if not required by the FCC. Access fees now charged throughout the telecommunications industry help keep some small telephone service providers in business, said Carl Wood, a commissioner with the California Public Utilities Commission. But other participants questioned if VoIP providers should have to pay access fees if they route an entire telephone call by IP, instead of using part of the public switched telephone network."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
VoIP is becoming common as using E-Mail, how will it ever be regulated?
Once you have any data stream over IP, it is pretty difficult to regulate, since it can be disguised on varying port numbers, encryption (which is probably a good idea anyway) and other techniques.
Unfortunately, to be a network you need to conform to a standard - in order to connect to all the OTHER users of the network. This exposes you to the regulators.
The techniques you describe would work fine for a small, closed community such as a criminal gang, terrorist cell, recreational club, or other small affinity group (until they were infiltrated by a government agent, of course. B-) ) But they would not work for a general, worldwide, everybody-with-a-VoIP-phone-can-play network.
Of course regulation attempts will drive herds of early-adopters from one VoIP variant to another in an effort to avoid them. But that's the sort of Red Queen's race where the costs of running exceed the costs of NOT running and eventually the bulk of the users will settle on a standard and pay a tax in order to stay connected and/or avoid hassle (or arrest).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The geeks of Slashdot will go for VoIP, just as hobbyists go for all kinds of things. International tariff arbitrageurs will use it, or at least say they are using it whether or not they really are using, say, VoFR (voice over Frame Relay) or even gray-market PCM instead.
But as a mass-market entity? Not a chance, and here's why:
1. It doesn't connect to existing internal home wiring and telephone sets without a lot of extra cost. Only geeks and their tolerant mothers make computer calls.
2. It needs QoS, and QoS ain't free. Look at Vonage. It's not free, and extra LD is >3 cents a minute. AT&T service through Sam's Club costs less than that!
3. You need a broadband connection for VoIP, plus you pay an extra charge. Think $30-$50 for broadband, and $15-$35 a month to the VoIP carrier which is what they charge for the QoS plus whatever the terminating carrier bills them for access to the PSTN.
4. By contrast, I beseech you ignorant slobs to check out an outfit called Cellsocket.com. They sell a doohickey that holds your cellphone. You plug it into your home wiring and disconnect your home wiring at the NID. Voila, all calls to and from your house go over the cellular network but you can use your regular home phones.
This is not an ad for Cellsocket. Their device is the first of many more to come. Some more features are needed, such as fax and dialup Internet capability. Plus the cost has to come down to under $50.
But hey, Moore's Law marches on. All of these things will happen, and soon. And when they do, there will be a stampede of wireline customers disconnecting their voice service and routing it over their cellular phones. They will use the huge numbers of unused minutes in their service bundles, and oh by the way there are no LD cellular charges.
Bottom line: Once you've got the wireless NID, home phone service is part of cellular service and you can use all the equipment and wiring you've known to love. You know, phones that you can cradle on your sholder while you're strirring your soup? The kinds of things that real people do while geeks are eating potato chips and tweaking video games.
You almost had my sympathy when it dawned on me:
...and yes. Sometimes it IS Funny.
This is a Commercial News Outlet
This isn't some hobby website on a shoestring budget, therefore it should be subjected to the same criticism that CNN, Fox News, or any other influential news outlet should be subject to...
If you don't like the criticism, don't read them. I personally VALUE comments like these as indicators of how people feel about Slashdot insofar as I'm concerned that Slashdot maintains an acceptable reputation for a serious forum of discussion.
Bitch! (Sorry, name calling seemed appropriate.)
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
But I'm afraid of vendor lock-in, so I'll rather use SIP/H.323
Used Skype. Works great.
Division of KaaZaa, of spyware fame. I see it goes right through your firewall. Nifty!
With IPv6 everyone on Earth will have dozens of personal IP numbers for their gadgets, VoIP is the wave of the future. All kinds of VoIP phones are hitting the market any moron can use. ATM will go the way of the Dodo, way too expensive to implement compared to IP based VoIP. Why do you think telephone companies around the world are using this technology which is why governments are freaking out. Anyone in denial of this is a stupid idiot!
The only difference with VoIP is that it's cheaper+easier to encrypt (and subvert).
IPv4 allocations for hobbyists? join the ipalloc-l mailing-list! www.operations.net/mailman/listinfo/ipalloc-l
I thought your great philosopher said...
The FCC won't let me be
Or let me be me
So let me see
They wanta shut me down on MTV
But it feels so emtpy
Without me
So...
The FCC won't let [VoIP] be
Or let [VoIP] be [VoIP]
So let [VoIP] see
They wanta shut [VoIP] down on [my IP]
But it feels so emtpy
Without [VoIP]
The first half of your post makes a number of points I've been trying to make here at work, to people you might characterize as "IP weenies". (They aren't onboard with VoIP yet. But they seem to think the digital convergence will occur by suddenly replacing all existing networks in toto with IP nets, inventing replacements for all previous wheels in IP format. No staged transition. No interfacing with legacy systems. Avoid all "That TDM shit" (actual quote at VP level) like the plague.)
Pity you posted as an AC. I'd love to get together with you to talk strategy.
But VoIP isn't doomed, or even an uneconomic proposition right now. It just isn't quite ready to take over the ENTIRE world in one go.
For instance: A recent slashdot story told of how a college in Tennessee installed $3M of Cisco VoIP equipment and cut its phone bill by over $6M/year. The equipment pays for itself in under 6 months, and the phone company is out a LOT of green.
And THAT's a BIG driving force for deployment of VoIP, and the collapse of the existing TDM telecom infrastructure. (Once they collapse, of course, their TDM long-haul equipment doesn't go away - it just becomes available on-the-cheap to new IP-based providers, further lowering the costs and accellerating the industry's collapse.)
Yes, existing equipment (including especially Cisco's) doesn't do QoS right in all circumstances. But there are already workarounds for local plants and last-miles, with solutions being worked on for the network core. As more QoS-requiring traffic moves to the internet, there will be a financial incentive for providers to get QoS right in the core networ: They can charge more for transient end-to-end reserved bandwidth with delivery and latency guarantees. (And thus reinvent "long-distance toll-call connections" in the IP context.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I am pleased to report that the crypto part is not a problem. According to its documentation, Skype employs a 256-bit AES cipher -- currently sufficient to please even the paranoid -- and on my lowly 400 MHz P3 box such a conversation uses about 40% of the CPU. The sound quality is about the same as POTS and only slightly worse than my Packet 8 service (VOIP).
What surprised me most, however, is that the time-delay with Skype was, to my ears, about the same as with Packet 8! This is fairly easy to test. Call your cell phone from your VOIP phone and put one on the left ear and the other on the right, while making utterances of your choice. If you have two PCs where you can connect one to a VPN (to give the data some distance to travel), you'll be able to do the same with two separate Skype accounts.
Let's just say you'd save yourself a lot of money on fuel for hot air.
1. Slashdot is not a niche site that only reports Kernal release. It's a VERY popular source of tech and science news with a readership capable of performing many inadvertant DOS attacks. That alone makes criticising Slashdot nessecary.
2. You then go on about how the comments makes Slashdot great hinting CNN and Fox could learn something from Slashdot. Well, how about that? WOULDN'T IT BE GREAT IF YOU COULD MAKE JOKES ABOUT FOX NEW'S SPIN (ON FOX NEWS) LIKE YOU CAN ON SLASHDOT???
You're missing the entire point of comments. Comments are there to balance the story if it's incorrect, misleading, of outright manipulative.
Sometimes a particular submitter keeps making the same mistakes OVER and OVER again. Why should we have to shut up, because you tolerate low standards? I want to hear what people with higher standards have to say, and I want the submitters to hear the criticism targeted at them.
Don't you think public scrutany is an important part of an open discussion?
You're ever so funny. Really.
And you are that humorless? Not familiar with injecting a dumb joke for levity sake? You're supposed to use a dumb joke so that you inflict some of the damage on yourself. It's like an olive branch that says, "Don't take me so serious."
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
In retrospect, I realize I'm just being stubborn. We both want to preserve Slashdot as a respectable discussion forum, and I must concede that taking aim at submitters is not an efficient or productive way at raising the bar for discussion, rather we should raise the bar in the discussion forum. Lastly, I finally understand your point that readers shouldn't be distracted by pointless pot shots at the submitters as it only debases the reputation of Slashdotters.
Having said that, I'm going to take a step in that direction by writing up a petition to bring back Jon Katz. This time, I will refrain from personal attacks like calling him a hyper-dramatic douche bag and will only respond to his inane submissions with serious discussion.
I will no longer respond to stupidity with stupidity, and most of all I will not hold my fellow Slashdotter's frustrations of proper discussion protocol in contempt, no matter how big of a cry baby they are with their "I don't want to have to read this! Why can't the world be perfect?!? Accommodate me! Come on guys! Stop trolling! Get serious!"
Thank you for hearing my apology.
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce