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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
Then this is obviously a dupe news post.
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
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
When automated processes control the world, we won't need jobs. It's a step forward. Can I take the blue pill now?
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.
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!
Karma: Excellent^(-t/Tau), Tau=Wittiness/Trollishness
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--
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.
Use Asterisk. If everyone starts to use asterisk then how are they going to keep track.
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 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