FCC Insists Feds Should Regulate VoIP

prostoalex writes "FCC Chairman Michael Powell insists federal officials should be the only ones regulating VoIP, as trusting the Internet phone regulations to states would result in patchwork of conflicting legislature. Powell is a strong proponent of VoIP (and a Skype user), and considers it the technology that ignites (not competes with) telecom industry. Research shows that fewer than 1 mln Americans use VoIP today, but that's expected to increase 12x by 2009."

Comments

Fuck regulation!

[Digital Avatar]

"FCC Chairman Michael Powell insists federal officials should be the only ones regulating VoIP, as trusting the Internet phone regulations to states would result in patchwork of conflicting legislature.

Here's a better idea: STOP REGULATING BUSINESSES TO DEATH! VoIP doesn't need regulation. This is nothing more than a cheap attempt by POTS providers to secure their cash cow by regulating the competition to death.

Re:Fuck regulation!

[slimyrubber]

Here's a better idea: STOP REGULATING BUSINESSES TO DEATH! VoIP doesn't need regulation. This is nothing more than a cheap attempt by POTS providers to secure their cash cow by regulating the competition to death.

The regulations arent just about money, they are also about control. Once you start controlling information, you become extremely powerful. I bet agencies like mpaa and riaa are really pissed that internet had very little government control to begin with.. and they are really trying to change that whether its really working or not.

Re:Fuck regulation!

[prostoalex]

Here's a better idea: STOP REGULATING BUSINESSES TO DEATH! VoIP doesn't need regulation.

But then if Comcast launches its own VOIP operator, as they have been rumored to do, and your Vonage/Packet8 calls suddenly experience worse than expected quality of service and inexplicable drops and hiccups, who will you appeal to, but the good ole US gov?

Re:Fuck regulation!

[prostoalex]

Read up Lawrence Lessig. While the telephone networks (and hence DSL lines) are considered to be public service, cable lines are the property of the cable operator.

Comcast, Adelphia and others did not use the public money to build it, so they do not have to give up control over it. With the broadband rush 5 years ago the ISPs around the States sued the cable companies to open up access for providing ISP services to the residential. No cigar - the cable lines are the property of the cable company, you only have control over your dollars (that you choose to give them or deny them), you do not have control over their content.

Comcast can do whatever they please.

Re:Fuck regulation!

[Digital Avatar]

Read up on the definition of Restraint of Trade. We're not talking about requiring them to deliver service to the competition, but impairing the services they have been contracted to deliver simply because the company in question is providing a competing service. Whether they should be required to do business with them in the first place is not relevant.

Re:Fuck regulation!

[Trolan]

As long as Unnamed ISP has no legal ties to the VoIP carrier which is being theoretically impacted in this case, I don't see how Restraint of Trade comes into it, unless you bring market coverage %age into it. If they don't wish to transit traffic across their network, they really aren't legally obligated to. The end-user ToS already has stipulations resrtaining what their ISP will allow on their connection, so it would be easy enough to leverage that to snip out VoIP traffic as being 'detrimental to general network health'

Now, Comcast could fall afoul of this due to their size, if they are also offering a competing service. The whole monopoly/antitrust routine we went through with Microsoft. Similar basis: company with large market presense establishes barriers to competing products by leveraging their scale to favor their services. Smaller ISPs in a competitive market would likely be able to drop traffic at their whim.

Personally, I wouldn't appreciate such an ISP's methods, but I would agree with the ISP putting in place a "Don't call us for VoIP issues" policy. Many of the smaller providers do just fine with non-realtime traffic, but they'd show their flaws with VoIP.

To FCC or not to FCC

[Gr8Apes]

What a conundrum. On this score, I'd have to agree that if anyone is to regulate the VoIP market, it should be at the federal level. I actually agree with his statement that otherwise you'd get a patchwork of regs, which would be bad.

On the other hand, this is the same FCC that hasn't moved an inch on Sinclair's intended abuse of the airwaves, is working incredibly hard to remove that "obscene" breast (that'd be the same breast most babies see multiple times a day!) from TV, and does other sundry things.

Re:To FCC or not to FCC

[Anonymous Coward]

The FCC needs radical change.

As of late, it has limited free speech and has encouraged the complete commercialization of radio and TV. No damn good!

Obviously broadcast frequencies need to be regulated but only to ensure multiple parties do not broadcast in the same area at the same frequency. Content should be off limit.

Ownership is another matter. Consolidation has caused irreperable harm to the quality of radio. I'm not suggesting we socialize it (the ultimate consolidation), but it needs to be regulated to encourage diverse* ownership. Which, by the way, does lead to more diverse programming.

Michael Powell has been a regular proponent of deregulation and censorship.. Making one correct decision doesn't warm me up to him much.

*BTW don't confuse my usage of the word "diverse" with the Newspeak (a.k.a. PC) usage. Not talking about race or religion or anything of the sort.

Re:To FCC or not to FCC

[Saeger]

If seeing a tit on TV causes moral decay, as you blindly believe, why hasn't Europe descended into barbarism with rapes left and right, etc.? They've got more primetime Tits & Ass in the media over there than violence, and the U.S. is just the opposite.

Could it be that sexual freedom isn't a BAD thing at all? That is, unless you're a religious control freak getting bitter with age.

--

Regulate?

[Hatta]

Why should anyone regulate VOIP? If I'm streaming bits from my computer to my friends computer across the country, what business of the government is it if it's voice or anything else. How are they even going to know?

Re:Regulate?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

911 emergency service access, primarily. Most other justifications are kinda flaky, though.

Why regulate?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing to regulate, why get the Feds mixed up in this crap so they can muck it up like everything else. People know you don't have 911 with VoIP, and there fine with it, fine with not paying for it especially.. those who want it can do e911 type services from Vonage, etc.. The only potential good that could come out of regulation would be in local number portability, but I can live without it if it means the government won't mess with what is really just an Internet service to public telephone network provider. Any one here can be a VoIP PSTN right now.. What would the Internet be like right now if regulations over Internet Service Providers made it so AOL, MSN, and the like were the only providers who could be competitve.

Re:Why regulate?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was being facetious... terrorism is just the excuse for wiretaps. The goverment is always looking for more ways to spy on the American public, whether or not it is legal.

Interesting and contradicting.

[Leykis101]

Michael Powell is the son of Colin Powell. As We all know that Colin Powell is the current Secretary of State under George W. Bush Administration. A Republican Administration.

Michael Powell is a registered Republican.

Interestingly, the GOP always preaching to have a smaller government and regulate the industry less.

Now, it seems that FCC, with a Republican Chairman is pushing an un-Republican agenda.

There is a really interesting article on msn.com regarding Michael Powell, The son of Colin Powell, the FCC Chairman.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2078879/

Makes you wonder.

Howard Stern is right!

-------

Badnarik supporter eh?

[CyberThalamus]

I know, used to be an extreme libertarian myself. I think this is a good idea. A bunch of states with regulations would be a huge headache. And no regulation will be fine post-singularity. For now, I really need a good emergency service.

eventually

[divot2001]

Of course the VoIP infrastructure should be regulated by the federal government; when it has a larger portion of the market and the technology has matured. In the meantime, regulation by the states would only explore alternatives for when it eventually becomes necessary to enact federal statutes. And the communications industry will continue to impede the development of VoIP, since it is cheaper to only lobby one group of officials.

Re:Inevitable - but where to start .. ?

[OneNonly]

I'm from Australia and so it makes little diffence where the regulation is being implemented in this particular example..

I just wish there was some way for the IETF to impose good practices on VoIP carriers and telcos in an *international* manner - rather than state by state or nation by nation.

Yeah, that's going to happen :'(

Re: FCC Insists Feds Should Regulate VoIP

[c1ay]

I really don't see why it should be regulated at all. Once the voice is digitized it becomes data packets like all of the other data packets traveling the web. What's the point in government regulating voice data packets? Sounds to me like the government providing insurance to the phone companies to protect their rackets like long distance. Kind of like the health insurance the mob used to sell, pay up and you'll stay healthy.

Re:Federal regulation + Corporate direction =

[Smoodo]

If regulation happens a certain firm with cash may jump in and say "REGULATE ME PLEASE!!!" because they are closer to conforming with whatever regulations will be passed. This will create a barrier to entry for small guys because they can't afford to comply. Goodbye competition.

This happened with the Tabacco companies. Let's see what happens here.

Their job was to create and protect monopolies

[billstewart]

The FCC's original job was partly to eliminate unregulated competition for the radio spectrum, ostensibly in the name of "protecting" the public's commons from interference, but in reality protecting the power of the early corporate interests who grabbed lots of spectrum, and regulating the content of speech you were allowed to broadcast. There were better alternatives - letting the market evolve formal or informal property rights, which happened in many places before government takeovers, and happened in Italy during much of the 80s and 90s when radio stations basically ignored the regulators but got along fine with each other. There were also worse alternatives - too many governments totally nationalized their airwaves, taking control away from the public and giving it to government propaganda stations. (Some of those produced some high quality material, like the BBC, but that was largely the exception.)

Additionally, they became the Federal regulators of the interstate aspects of the telephone monopolies, though those had already become largely state-regulated because the "regulated monopoly" tradeoff of exclusive power to offer a service in return for politically correct implementation and pricing is basically a geographical monopoly at the local scale.

Much of the New Deal really worked that way - trading off favors for regulation while telling the public that they were beating up the evil nasty monopolies.

Feds vs. States and bad regulation

[billstewart]

Of course regulation is a terrible idea, but it's while decentralization is usually better at creating a better variety of policies, in this case it's much better to have the Feds who have half a clue in charge rather than 50+ sets of state regulators who've got even less of a clue and who are totally in bed with the local telcos, and who'll make it difficult to build nationwide communications systems, much less global ones.

Most of the POTS providers are also trying to get into the VOIP game, because that's where the low-cost emerging technology is, so they've got mixed positions here. The biggest costs in typical VOIP-to-POTS environments are the customer premises equipment (VOIP routers or whatever) at the VOIP end and the local telco's per-minute price for delivering analog voice to houses at the destination. The telcos are often still charging 2 cents per minute for that, in spite of the amortized cost of the long-haul portion being 1/10 cent per minute, and unless something is done to change that regulatory structure, everybody's going to be building ugly workaround architectures.

Re:12x that #? why?

[zentec]

1. Yes, those who are less than technically savvy are going to be very wary of it. So they'll spend $15 per month for a Voicepulse account and keep the landline. For a couple months, until they realize that $15 buys the essentially the same thing they're paying some ILEC $50 when they could be paying a VoIP provider a lot less.

Money talks.

2. How so? VoIP requires an analog telephone adapter that plugs into your existing corded and cordless phones. They all work great. And here's something that'll make your hair stand on end and a lot of people on Slashdot just can't seem to grasp about VoIP; you'll need a VoIP provider for a very long time because a large percentage of the world will still be on the circuit switched POTS network.

So while the concept of point-to-point VoIP calls over the Internet is sexy, it's likely your calls to grandma will still need a POTS line somewhere. So when the rest of the world catches up to you, enjoy your ATA and your plain old telephones.

3. You obviously do not have a family with teenagers. My monthly home telephone minutes are in excess of 800 minutes. $15 on Voicepulse gets me half of my state as a local phone call and 200 minutes of long distance. I don't think any cell provider could touch that.

yawn

[Doc Ruby]

The FCC is looking for any justification to perpetuate its political power. With technology advances and concentration of corporate broadcast ownership, both of which further the agenda of Republicans like Chairman Powell, they need to secure other bases for their control. The old "less government for more people" rhetoric is classic Republican smokescreen for more government. And Powell is playing right according to the playbook.

Re: FCC Insists Feds Should Regulate VoIP

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't see why it should be regulated at all
two words why it will: Lawful Intercept

typical

[Wansu]

This is consistent with all the other stuff Powell has done. He's a corporate welfare handout man. He just can't wait to get his hands on VoIP. Oh, the power brokering leverage that would give him. This little caesar is the reason we don't have fiber to the curb today. No sooner did he liquidate the RF spectrum then he's ready to cannabalize the internet too. He's gotta go.