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Free World Dialup Under The Gun Again
PetiePooo writes "The FCC will be holding an Open Commission Meeting [PDF] Thursday. Number one on the agenda is a 'Petition for Declaratory Ruling that Pulver.com's Free World Dialup is neither Telecommunications nor a Telecommunications Service.' By passing this, the FCC will, in Jeff's words, 'send a strong signal to consumers and capital markets that the FCC is not interested in subjecting end-to-end IP Communications services to traditional voice telecom regulation under the Communications Act.' For those unfamiliar with it, FWD is sort of like DNS for VoIP. You give it a FWD phone number, it gives you the IP address of the associated SIP phone. Slashdot touched on FWD three years ago, and again last year."
Yes, and that's most likely why current telecom providers want this to be considered a regulated service, so that only they can provide it. Right now, its a service the Ma Bells have the abilities to provide, but they don't because they wouldn't be able to charge for it while FWD is still in existance.
FWD is an enabler that helps the VoIP to phone linkers, but is not a VoIP to phone linker themselves.
Since the site is getting real slow with only 3 posts, here is a mirror:
Mirror
What's the use of this technology? It says on the website at http://www.fwd.pulver.com/index.php?section_id=71
that you can't call traditional POTS or cell phones, only other FWD members or other partner VOIP providers.
I don't have Vonage or the like, but I'm sure I will eventually, but didn't Netmeeting do the same thing back in the Windoze 98 days?
--------------------------------------------- SignalGod ---------------------------------------------
Everyone can then setup their very own Asterisk box.
Here's a link to an article about the Feds wanting more time before the FCC rules on VoIP so they can figure out how to tap into VoIP calls.
Use Asterisk. If everyone starts to use asterisk then how are they going to keep track.
Yes, but Powell belives that the pre-existing rules are part of the problem, that the highest penality he can assess right now is $27,500 per station that broadcast a rule-breaking program. His proposal is that the fines be adjusted to make a dent in the now big-pocket companies that would pay them... $275,000 per station that broadcasts a rule breaking incident, with the ability to define more than one incident per program and also lower the bar it takes to revoke the licenses of stations that repeatedly offend.
Powell is also threatening to make a play for the ability to regulate cable content, which so far has been out of reach the FCC, but is within the domain of Canada's broadcast regulators. He's not quite making the proposal for this yet, but is warning cable operators that they better show an improved effort to self-police if they don't want the government coming.
Of course, the FCC cannot increase its own power. The FCC can only execute laws on the books. So, any such proposal needs congressional approval. Still, Powell's a big voice on Capitol Hill, and these seem like reasonable requests given the current state of things, so Congress just might give him the power he's requesting.
Huge amounts of money per minute for international calls?
I don't know what you're talking about.. since we get calls to the entire industrialized world for under $0.25 USD per minute. I can call Japan for $0.10 per minute and can call the UK for $0.08 per minute. Thats almost as cheap as the $0.07 per minute I'm paying for domestic long distance.
I remember paying $0.25 per minute for calls within the same state! Before deregulation, it was even worse. Even today, most in-state calls are more expensive than international calls. Hell, even calls to Russia are $0.20 per minute!
Here, see what I'm talking about:
http://www.consumer.att.com/global/english/
These rates are damn cheap.. and I'm glad to have them.
BTW, AT&T will be providing VoIP. They don't say how cheap it will be yet, but they are saying it will be cheaper than POTS. See here:
http://www.consumer.att.com/voip/
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
yeah, and watch every bit of free speech and anonymity you ever had vanish into thin air.
How does this make telcos obsolete? The telcos are the ones that operate the entire backbone of the internet, as well as most of the last mile connections. They won't loose any jobs. They may loose money as people switch to VoIP, but that will simply mean that the price of data lines will go up to compensate for the dual role that they are playing.
On the point of OSS, it has created jobs, as well as replacing them. Furthermore, I hate to say this but we what we consider "normal" for the shrink-wrapped software industry, was really a boom, and it's getting ready to bust. By and large, the only reason people buy new versions of software is because they need to stay compatible with everyone else. The rest of the industry has dropped in prices in time, while software if anything has risen. Shrinkwrapped software is an industry waiting to be obsoleted. Lastly, the vast majority of software jobs are custom in-house or consulting work, and those jobs don't have anything to loose from OSS - in fact they are the very types of jobs which OSS is creating.
Technology is simply change. Throughout history, people have always been afraid of fact that technology will not provide the jobs it replaces, and they have always been proven wrong. There is nothing about these two particular advances which suggests that it will be any different.
Saying they're "under the gun" implies that they were dragged their by a hostile FCC. This is largely Pulver trying to get the territory nailed down in a relatively friendly centralized manner, largely to block the kinds of problems that are happening in some states where the Public Utilities Commission has discovered that someone is doing something useful and profitable without their regulatory "help".
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Not entirely true... Don't forget that FWD only provides Internet calling. If you want a gateway to the rest of the world (i.e. ,the PSTN) then you have to pay.
If FWD were to provide PSTN gateway and PSTN reachable numbers then it would be just like Vonage.
Not sure the FCC would see FWD the same way in that case...
Yes, and that's most likely why current telecom providers want this to be considered a regulated service...
Interestingly, Jeff has several friends in the telecom and datacom industries, among them AT&T, Qwest, Worldcom, Global Crossing and Cisco. Outside of that, the venerable EFF is also in favor of his petition. (Donate now!)
I didn't include it in the story in order to avoid trampling his site too much, but he still has the original petition [PDF] available online.