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

How quaint.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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.

Is this an essay test?

[plexxer]

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.

What will emerge

[mindstrm]

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.

Just The Facts

[Pave Low]

For those who want to know what the issue is about, instead of scanning the submitter's poor writeup filled with his slant and myriad questions, here's a better article on what's going on.

FCC Chairman Powell Opposes Internet Phone Regulation.

Already paid for

[BWJones]

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?

Let the market rule

[mikeymckay]

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.

Regulators irrelevant

[nv5]

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.

Re:Why should IP make telephone calls free?

[interiot]

why expect them to change when the underlying medium is IP?

Okay, charge for the medium in general then (IP, cable, DSL, etc...), not particular applications running on top of it (irc, email, voip). Applications are far too fluid, innovative, and morphable/hidable (especialy for geeks like us) for the government to define exactly what should be charged for and what shouldn't. (though you could say that about radio waves too, *grumble*). I don't want an intrusive infrastructure hard-wired into my computer or on the ISP's side that analyzes every packet and charges differently for each one.

POTS/PSTN Defined

[romper]

For non-telco-speaking Slashdotters..

POTS = Plain Old Telephone System
PSTN = Public Switched Telephone Network

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.

Re:Why should IP make telephone calls free?

[ad0gg]

VOIP is that just that Voice over IP, be it Sip or H323 or any thing else. So now I should pay money because I play Counterstrike and use voice enabled feature to talk to my teammates? Or Xbox live users? Or using video conferencing over IM? Or any of the web conferencing products? Better yet, why should I be double taxed. I already pay taxes on my telephone line, now you want me to be double taxed because I'm using VOIP too? VOIP is only part of the future, SIP which can specify many different types of communication will be the future. People keep thinking our phones are going to be used for voice only, take a look at cell phones. Its going to be text messages(sms), video conferencing, picture messageing(mms) and much more. I guess we could kill it now by over regulating it since change is bad.

Regulation != Bad

[i_r_sensitive]

Folks keep hammering on the evils of regulation, this is an absolute fallacy and needs to squashed now.

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?

Re:Asterix - VoIP for me?

[RustyTaco]

Debian, check, Asterisk, check, modem, no. Digum single line FXS card, yes. And if you throw a single line FXO card in too you can plug your phone into the FXS, PTSN line into the FXO, and configure asterisk to route what it can (friends, etc) over some sort of VoIP(H323, SIP, IAX, etc) and everything else out the PTSN line.

As an uber bonus you get voicemail and can then to spiffy menus and skrew with people just like call centers like to you, complete with MP3 hold music. "I value your call, please hold." "I'm not answering right now, press one to leave a message, press 2 to page my cell phone with your caller ID info..." etc. Hell, you can even use CallerID to decide how to answer calls. Work=>strait to voicemail, girlfriend (Hey! It could happen) => play a special message and ring the phone with a distinctive ring. Ex-girlfriend=>"This number has been disconnected, or is not in service".

It's almost enough to make me want a land line ;)

- RustyTaco