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?"

Comments

Curious

[ActionPlant]

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,

Re:Curious

[Dr Caleb]

The second largest phone company Telus is switching most of it's existing POTS network to VoIP.

Asterix - VoIP for me?

[sirReal.83.]

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 ;)

Re:It has already started

[oakbox]

There are devices like this now, Vonage http://www.vonage.com, comes to mind, though the early VOIP providers are going through a price war/shakeout so it's hard to see who will come out on top (or with the standard).
There is a basic assumption in the original post, local calls are not free here in the Netherlands. You pay for every minute on the phone, it's just a question of how much. And individual connection points doesn't scale well. VOIP and traditional telcos will merge only with the agreement and participation of the telcos.
The race right now is to see which road we go down, a complete one for one replacement of traditional phone connections or a merging of telcos into VOIP. Several telcos are starting to move their internal traffic over IP right now, so I think we'll see the second future.
Nothing is really free (as in beer), and if it is, it's only because someone hasn't figured out how to charge you for it.

A bit is a bit is a bit

[evilned]

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.

Re:How quaint.

[swordboy]

The little man has no say in this, these "public meetings" are all a charade.

In this case, I would have to disagree.

Any Joe Schmoe with the proper resources (either intellectual or financial) can whip up a VoIP application and communicate over the internet merely free of regulators. This won't change.

Now, all these telecom taxes exist because the PSTN (public switched telephone network) is a monopoly - you can't have multiple PSTN networks. It would become too bulky and there would be no economy of scale. The taxes exist so that this monopoly can be regulated.

Now, I can see a tax when a VoIP device interfaces with the PSTN. But this should only pressure the VoIP industry to move away from the PSTN. PSTN, as stated above, is bulky and not practical when we have efficient packet-switching networks that can easily replace it at 60 percent of the cost.

I vote for taxes on a per-PSTN call basis. This would be a good compromise - those that use packet-switching would not have to support the junk that is PSTN.

I would also like a module to interface with my home phone system. If I dial a "normal" PSTN phone number, it simply routes my call over my POTS phone line. If I dial a # or * prior to an IP address or URL, then it should route my call over my internet connection.

After a while, I wouldn't see the need for a PSTN, anymore.

Eminem has shown that the FCC has a funky name

[t_allardyce]

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.

Voip! Voip!

[madro]

[excerpted from today's Wall Street Journal, which has even more access restrictions than the New York Times. Paul Kedrosky, the author of the commentary, teaches business at the University of California, San Diego.]

Incumbent telecoms are tying themselves in knots over all this. They generally think that the current wave of upstart VOIP providers are getting a free ride given that they currently don't pay the same regulator-decreed access fees and subsidies. But incumbents are also smart enough to implicitly threaten to cut and run to VOIP themselves if the FCC gives competitors free rein in profitable voice markets.

But providers of VOIP service are only slightly less cynical. While they are getting scads of fawning press now, it is hard to imagine a future that includes most of them. Because six years or so from now we will almost certainly be calling from dedicated voice devices that plug directly into your high-speed Internet connection. You are no more likely to be billed for future phone calls than you are for current e-mails.

Call it the Napsterization of the phone business, where paying VOIP companies $35 a month for the privilege of connecting you via the Internet with the spendthrift sorts on the old telecommunications network will seem silly and unnecessary. The smartest thing most VOIP vendors could do now is quickly exploit VOIP-phoria to go public or get bought. Wait, that's what they are doing.

There is work left for regulators, like ironing out 911 and 411 access, as well as how law enforcement will tap Internet phone calls. But 911 issues didn't stop cell phones, and the arrival of e-mail that police could no longer steam open rightly didn't cause e-mail to be outlawed.

VOIP won't drastically affect POTS

[dacarr]

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.

Re:VOIP won't drastically affect POTS

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. VoIP has already affected POTS in that many carriers are using IP protocol and sofswitches to carry traffic over the fiber backbone. Also, most international calls that are not bound for Europe are transmitted via IP.

I also do not buy your argument that radical changes would need to be made to the telco's hardware in order for p2p voip to be practical. Cisco and Nortel both ofer voip routers that plug into your cable modem. Then you simply plug your phone into the router. All that a company really needs in order to make voip succeed is access to telephone numbers and a gateway into the PSTN in order to terminate traffic. This can easily be accomplished by partnering with one of the competitor exchange carriers.

Generally the large telcos do not support p2p voip because of the potential for it to eat into the huge profits they make on local service. Also, they have a huge (multi-billion dollar) investment in copper wire POTS which they want to protect. However, if it is deemed necessary, you can expect to see incumbent telcos providing local voip service.

I Disagree

[Angram]

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.