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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 mean that the FCC will instead write up new regulations and restrictions for VoIP? Instead of lumping it under Telecommunications?
Slashdot sucks
We are always decrying the dearth of technology jobs, but then we laud things like this which make such jobs obsolete. VoIP is a really cool technology which makes telcos (and subsequently jobs at those telcos) obsolete.
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? There is always the argument that by eliminating these jobs we can create a new class of higher-level jobs, but as we see demonstrated by VoIP and other things like OSS, mostly we are destroying corporations which are the primary provider of jobs in this country. It's like we've got all these great ideas, but no morality that forces us to step back and evaluate the negative impact that those ideas have.
I have been pwned because my
Michael Powell was on the tv show Screensavers over at techtv. He stated he didnt want to regulate, and wanted to open services. He made some interesting comments, like how when the FCC didnt regulate what goes on the Internet, all the services, companies and inventions that came out of it. He then started on the free unregulated spectrum they are allowing people to use for Wifi ISPs.
He sounds like hes on the ball for most stuff, was rather impressed he wants the market to grow, and to now cripple it with regulations.
I still don't trust the FCC, but at least it shows he understands the regulation powers of the FCC, and avoiding it. Or maybe he's just not bought by special interests yet.
FWD works great and I highly recommend it. They even provide voice mail. Pulver has done a great thing, and the FCC has absolutely no business screwing it up! I don't need to call 911 over IP, and I don't want regulatory access fees and taxes to pay for 911...
-Erik -- --This message was written using 73% post-consumer electrons--
Kiss your privacy goodbye thanks to... You
MoFscker
Go ahead and mod me a troll, I've got karma to burn ;)
However, I think this is a point people often overlook:
Assuming VoIP takes over the current Telco system...
Who is going to pay for the infrastructure? This all takes money to keep in order. If phone companies aren't around, you will be making up the payments to your internet connection provider.
Not exactly true. MCI has a nice VOIP infrastructure in place, but it appears it is only available to businesses at the moment.
Karma: -2147483648 (Mostly affected by integer overflow)
What with the last go around with Powell and his support of a very one sided royalty system for internet radio, I was seriously thinking the guy was like darth Vader or something.
but this, this thing, this VOIP SIP phone not needing regulation and therefore added expense and licensing and anal probing and government placating and and well..
It's just wonderful!
Now for all those who say "But where will the telcos pay for the landlines" I say, they should roll in the SIP themselves and offer it as part of their DSL/Broadband package. Charge and extra $30 a month for it and overcharge 500% on the eqpt as usual with a mandatory fee of $250.00 for sending over a dude dressed like a gas station attendent who will plug it in and turn it on, plus cram in 120 or so extra fees and excise taxes. And that my friend is where SBC and the like will compensate for long distance.
I've posted this before, when the topic came up on another occasion, but it's worth repeating.
The FCC is NOT going to regulate computer-to-computer "phone" calls. If you run voice over your Internet connection, as an application, it's your business, and that's that. Even the guy who drafted the infamous ACTA petition in 1996 now thinks VoIP is cool stuff.
The problem is the phone call between the consumer with a plain old phone line and the VoIP network. "Phone to phone" and "phone to computer" calls have a telco leg that's just a plain old voice call. Under current law, a phone call can be either "telephone exchange service" or "exchange access service". The former is basically taken to mean a local call, though the legal definition is a bit more expansive. The latter is taken to be the local phone company's leg of a toll call (what AT&T or MCI buys). Guess which one costs more.
Now if all VoIP calls were treated as local ("telephone exchange service"), then the local telephone companies (think: Bells) would lose money that they now make from exchange access service ("switched access"). And the rural phone companies, who charge the long distance companies MUCH more than the Bells for that service, in order to compensate for higher costs (that is, to subsidize local service to the sticks), are very protective of switched access revenues. And the flyover states each have two senators.
So the main issue will come up around the far end of a Vonage call, for instance -- if Vonage is a long-distance company, they will have to pay access when they deliver a long distance call. Just like other long distance companies. Skype's on-net calls, and FWD, won't be touched as long as they are on net. Count on it.
Ideally, the whole access thing would go away, and the distinction between access and local would be moot. That's the way it works in msot of Europe, I think -- it's an American tradition to classify things to death, and let the lawyers litigate like crazy over the classification. How many billable lawyer hours do you think this case will be worth in Washington?
Yes, I agree, competition is a good thing. But I do have to argue that it CAN be possible to introduce competition into older established businesses. Look at the AT&T and MCI case. Since then, prices have continued to drop from the increased competition.
The $500 bill is quite a bit. I would bet he wasn't on an international calling plan. In that case, he would be paying full-rate for those calls, which is just rediculously expensive. We call Japan for hours at a time every month (family there). The phone bill lists every month "you saved $855 over basic rates" "you saved $1075 over basic rates" and other craziness like that. Basic rates are a ripoff. Its 10x worse if you're calling from a cell phone.
I'd consider leaving POTS behind, except that it is difficult to get the phone company to give you a dry pair to connect your DSL to. And most DSL providers arn't equipped to handle that (tracking you by your phone number, etc). And cable is just too monopoly-driven and lock-in prone.
Nope, don't work for AT&T. Just a customer that was pleased to find out I could make calls to Japan for $0.10.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
have you noticed that since the new year, a large portion of /. posts have the qualifying remark of "Slashdot touched on this....blah". It seems someone called a team meeting and said "Look you dupe posting fux, we gotta check our shit out, we are dealing with an observant audience who doesn't tolerate this half-assed work." I could be wrong, but I haven't seen one unqualified dupe....
ymmv
Yeah, I can't wait for this to be deregulated all around. I can already picture the time when everything is provided over Internet.
Guy trying to get phone number from a girl:
"So... what's your phone number?
-- That's 203_5678@wisconsin-isp.com, with an underscore inbetween 203 and 5678 and a dash in the domain name.
-- Uh, got a pen?" (dial that on your cell phone)
Notice in your mail:
"Don't lose your phone number! Pay your yearly registration fee in time..." (or else some cyberphone squatter is going to receive your calls).
And of course the inevitable calls to emergency failing because some DNS server is unreachable. Or because the routing tables in your ISP's network have not converged and are still being adjusted for a net split (please bear with us while your husband is bleeding to death).
Go IP!
1. Why do we want to use a number to contact a specific phone instead of alphanumerics to contact a person like an email address? When we use a phone, are we trying to contact another phone, or a person? Unless it's a business line, isn't it usually a specific person we're trying to reach?
2. How long until we start getting VoIP spam?