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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."
Would this service be almost impossible to provide if the FCC regulated it as a telecom?
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When automated processes control the world, we won't need jobs. It's a step forward.
Hopefully he can build up enough inertia that any of his successors who do get bought out won't be able to turn the tide back with aforementioned crippling regulations. They way you describe him is very reassuring.
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My concern is if VOIP is not regulated properly, it may become widespread enough that it will affect the revenue the companies that maintain the land lines, and reliability will suffer. Clearly VOIP cannot be as reliable as POTS, as it requires a much more complex consumer hardware and software. Cell phones could be nearly as reliable as POTS except that the wireless companies seem to be more focused on bells and whistles rather than insuring basic service.
It may be that we can no longer afford reliable telephone service. If so, I would like to see that decision made intentionally.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Technology's main goal has always been to eliminate jobs. This is why 99% of us aren't toiling in fields at the moment. Sure, it puts a lot of people out of work, and we need free bread and circuses to keep 'em out of trouble, but do you really want a job doing what is in essence pointless busywork? Eventually a new problem will spring up that needs a lot of work thrown at it. At the very least, a morass of paperwork has started to mount, and there is never any end to red tape. Ever. So look for a job processing stupid bureaucratic garbage, no machine can ever figure out how to process it!
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So, basically, the FCC won't touch you unless you do something that they don't like? That is not hands off. Either he's going to control what can and cannot be broadcast, or he isn't. You can't have it both ways.
I'm trying hard not to become a Luddite here, but how can we save jobs if technology's main goal is to eliminate those jobs?
If that was true, the United States, arguably the leader in technological advances over the last 100 years, would be at the bottom of the pile, rather than the top. In truth, technology may eliminate some jobs, but it always creates MORE jobs. It merely moves them from one business to another.
When the automakers replaced humans with robots, the smart humans went to work for the companies that make the robots. Those companies and their suppliers employed more workers than were replaced by the robots. The serpent can not swallow it's own tail.
By that same logic, your post should have been sent via the postal system. It's not a perfect analogy, but I think the argument is similar to the one about email vs. the postal service. I don't think we need to outlaw innovation to protect jobs. /rant off
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Because although the VeriChip doesn't fall into the "food" or "drug" category, it's dangerously close to the line and the investigation was into if they have crossed it.
The VeriChip makers suggest that it could be used future to provide information about an unconcious person to medical personel. Such a use would be a medical use, but since they're only implanting the thing in a few people without providing the readers to any of those people's medical providers... uhm, the medical application hasn't been developed yet.
Also, they're going into a rather new territory that maybe should be regulated. Afterall, body piercings are regulated by the states, but who's regulating ID chips implanted into humans? There's serious health risks associated with implanting things into humans that don't belong there, so some safety protocol needs to be followed to make sure they're doing things right. If the FDA doesn't have the power to regulate, then somebody should be...
How can we possibly keep people in work if cars make all those horse salesmen, stablers, saddlers, buggy makers, blacksmiths etc obsolete! It will be a job holocaust! Nobody will be working except the car drivers!
Fool, learn the lesson of history, what's being destroyed is inefficient jobs. Not only will the new tech create replacement jobs directly, but indirectly through efficiency gains (money not wasted on one thing can be additionally spent upon another) and through enabling whole new types of job.
All protectionists and luddites should have learned by now that their ideas are pure crap. So they should shut up.
The fear isn't as much in protecting the jobs of Ma Bell employees, but making sure that anybody who wants to come forward as the replacement to Ma Bell provide a full replacement to Ma Bell, not just one that satisfies the market.
People would not voluntarily pay for 911 service if it was optional, but as a society, the community as a whole is better off to have it. Therefore 911 comes free with any POTS or cellular service you get, whether you like it or not. The question that the VoIP suppliers having trouble answering is how they intend to duplicate the 911 system in a world where they rule the marketplace and the POTS system is shut down as obsolite.
Some people have decided they don't need POTS because their cell phone is a total replacement. If people are going to start ditching POTS because VoIP is all they need, we better make sure it lives up to the same reliabilty and service levels.
VOIP is no more "telecommunications service" than instant messaging is. One goes over powerlines that are routed through trunks at your telephone company and involve charges across state lines and intercompany transmission fees/credits and government regulation, state utilities, utility commissions, government employees, oversight, etc.
The other is sending bits of data from one computer, over the internet, to another computer. Some bits may be recombined to produce "talking" or another bunch of bits may recombine to produce images of a videogame or an email. In this case, it's voices.
The only thing at issue here is whether or not the old phone companies can be given welfare and sort of a "mafia" type protection so that VOIP can't compete with them and THEY can control it. It's like Don Corlione moving into another drug product and forcing everyone who was selling it out of their territory.
In the past, technology has been used to eliminate inefficient jobs, that is true. However, it replaced those jobs with other money-making jobs. Or, if you will, it replaced those obsolete products with new revenue-generating products.
If you take a look at VoIP, it promises to eliminate revenue altogether. Linux does the same. This is not an issue if this push towards making things free were just a tiny bubble in the tech world, but it is a growing movement. If things keep up at the rate that it is currently growing, it is not unlikely that at some point most software and services will be provided for free. At that time, who will pay your salary?
Who is going to pay for the infrastructure? This all takes money to keep in order.
Perhaps the governemt should fill this role.
Like they maintain the highway infrastructure.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
In truth, technology may eliminate some jobs, but it always creates MORE jobs. It merely moves them from one business to another.
I disagree. Technology just plain eliminates jobs.
Society, however, creates new ones to fill the gap.
I agree with you that we are not going to be in a situation where we cannot get any jobs for people. The folks proposing things like this are ridiculous. Luxury items have *always* filled up the gaps -- the wealth always pay a premium for some new status symbol or slight standard-of-living increase.
In India, it is quite financially feasible for a moderately wealthy person to have a number of servants. In the United States, *very* few people have a number of servants, because human labor is so expensive relative to most people's income -- we have a very strong middle class. There are lots of people who would be interested in getting a maid, a gardener, etc if they could afford to do so.
The fact that many people that would like to have servants do not have them is simply because of the fact that we have a vast number of jobs to fill, and people have gone for more desireable ones.
That was just a single example. Are machine-made items generally more uniform, higher quality, more efficient to produce, and cheaper? Sure. However, they don't have the character that hand-made items do. They aren't *unique*. In the US, human labor is expensive (again, lots of jobs relative to the number of people.), so hand-made items are rare, but still purchased by the wealthy. If technology eliminates more jobs, hand-made goods will become more affordable. Yes, you could cheaply get a photograph of a painting on your wall, but it's just not the *same* as having the original painting on your wall.
Our productivity always increases. If we wanted to retain an 1800s standard-of-living, then we would have had most of the population out of work a long time ago. Demands on standard-of-living always cause increases. Heck, today I can walk into my living room (I live in a house with numerous rooms -- far more than the two rooms that the poor would have had a few hundred years ago.) I can turn on the television. A few hundred years ago, the wealthiest king could have had perhaps multiple sets of performers playing at a major event -- a feast, a wedding, etc. I have something like *forty* different stages of performers constantly performing (channels), any of which I can watch. I can even repeat bits I like. The movies and shows contain content that simply could not have been produced in mideval times.
I can go down to the store and choose just about any food I want in the world, and I can afford it. I can eat oranges in the dead of winter, if I want to do so (and I just did this morning). I can eat *ice cream*, which used to be something that was pricy even for royalty.
I wear clothes that have a finer knit, are more durable, and probably more brightly colored than even kings could enjoy.
Each night, I can relax as heated water -- as much as I'd like -- is continuously poured over me. The temperature can be increased exactly to taste with a flick of my fingers.
I can speak with my friends at any time, no matter where in the world they are, and much more quickly than by sending out a horse and rider.
I cannot smell the people that I live with, and they don't need to cover up their own stench with perfume, as would have happened a few hundred years ago. Our clothes are washed with almost no effort.
Our water is drawn and heated for us. Our bread is toasted to taste for us. We can get many varieties of hot food within a few minutes (thanks to the microwave) of the moment we think of it. We can obtain exotic spices of almost any sort. Our dishes are washed for us. Our rugs are beaten for us (thank you, vacuum cleaner). Cold foods are kept easily available to hand. If I want hot chocolate, instead of pumping water, lighting a fire, putting the water over the fire, waiting half an hour,
May we never see th
That's a rather fatuous argument, don't you think? Of course they're having trouble answering questions regarding what they'll be doing in a hypothetical situation which, if it comes about at all, lies decades down the line. It's not like the TelCom industry is going to commit seppuku rather than attempt to remain competitive.
911 compatability wouldn't be hard. If things ever DID reach that point, the government (which centralizes 911 anyway, remember) and the industry work out some new protocol for handling VoIP 911 calls. And that's the other half of the equation - the VoIP industry has to be strong enough that the government sees a need to make it easy for them to get into 911. Once they hit that point, it'll happen quickly. (just as, originally, cell phones didn't have 911 on them, no?)
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
"If you take a look at VoIP, it promises to eliminate revenue altogether"
No, it promises to eliminate waste.
Consider these five questions:
- What else could people and businesses spend the money on, that they used to waste on phone bills?
- What totally new things could people and businesses do with infinite free phone time, that they could not have done when phones cost money?
- What new businesses could start, because the lowered cost margins suddenly make their plans profit-viable?
- What new businesses could start, because the tech is functionally better, and opens up opporunities that were impossible before?
- What new innovation could now happen in the arena of phones and phone-like technologies, that was previously impossible, because the technology was expensive to own and inaccessible to learn?
That new innovation will improve efficiency yet again, and the cycle goes around.
Hypothetically, it would *inspire* them to finally lay down that optical cable they've been promising us for years. They'll no longer be riding on the profits of their copper-based services and ignoring everything else.
I also, like the other respondant, would have no problem with my tax dollars going to help fund the network - as long as We, The People own the network and not the corporations sitting upon it. I think a strong argument could be made that the communications grid is just as important a public resource as the street system and needs to be moved towards a format where no single entity is allowed to even potentially gain control of it.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Perhaps the governemt should fill this role. Like they maintain the highway infrastructure.
Not a good example. You don't have the right to drive a car on the highway. It is a privelage. You must agree to stop and identify yourself when directed to by law enforcment. You must agree to pay special fees between two points when directed to do so.
A government controlled infrastructure that displaces the telco industry would probably make things simpler for the FBI, no more problems with untappable technology. For those thinking I will encrypt look again at the physical highways where you are required to identify yourself. Also what is there to stop the government from dropping encrypted connections? Free speech, privacy, no, again look at the highway system, a privelage not a right.
Personally I'm not worried about the above but I'm sure many around here who were jumping on the highway analogy were not thinking about it very much. My personal concern is that I doubt that whatever infrastructure the government comes up with will cost less than what the telcos would have cost. If the day comes where I no longer have to give AT&T money I expect that I will be giving an even larger amount to my ISP and/or government internet utility.
Technology also creates jobs doing things that wouldn't be possible without it, because tasks that wouldn't be possible before become possible, and people are then needed to perform those tasks. For any particular task, technology (ideally) makes it so you don't need so many people to do it, but that is outweighed by the "next step" tasks that become possible.
So technology generally creates jobs at about the same rate, overall, than it eliminates them. Which is why American cities aren't more overrun with unneeded, out-of-work, former workers than ancient Rome was.
So, your ISP bill will go up when they force you to pay the universal access charges that currently get tacked onto your phone bill.
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I agree.. but it got your attention, didn't it?
Maintaining the metaphor, I suppose its more like FWD stepping in front of the gun to see if the FCC pulls the trigger, rather than the FCC swinging the gun so that it points at FWD.
The best defense is a good offense -- Vince Lombardi