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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
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.
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.