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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."
For the corps of course.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Regulation of VoiP is inevitable - especially as it starts to become more main stream (and especially when the major carriers begin to switch over to it).
I just wish the regulation would start by getting all carriers to allow user defined ENUM records - and allow the Voip revolution to start in a big way.
If I can specify a SIP address in Enum for my own home phone number, then anyone using SIP phones that looked up ENUM could be routed to this number, and bypass the carrier all together.. But how many carriers can we actually see implementing this without some form of government intervention??
This has nothing to do with control in that sense. This has everything to do with maintaining their share of the market. After all, if it _was_ about controlling information, don't you think that those who purvey unpopular opinions would have a hell of a time getting phone service? Ma Bell and Friends seem all too happy to service anybody so long as the check clears.
And doesn't this go beyond their mandate?
Where is it written that anytime something new arrives the government has to come along and shit all over it?
How do they propose to even define VoIP? Does iChatAV count? Does it have to be real time? If so, how do you define that? What is the level of latency before it becomes unregulated? If it doesn't have to be realtime do you then tax attaching .aiff files to e-mail? Is it all about phone numbers? How long after they start regulating it that way before people simply abandon that archaic addressing scheme?
No, no, no, no, no. Nobody apart from the endpoints should have any reason to look at anything besides the IP header. We've already departed too far from that state of affairs.
From the telcos' perspective, there is a lot of motivation to centralize the authority over VoIP. Why? Because they know the freight train is coming and they would like to send all their lobbyists to one place (Washington) instead of having to spread their efforts out to every state capitol.
:)
If you want to protect VoIP, the best thing we can do is have the individual states regulate it. Security through heterogenity works against attacks on technology as well as for computer networks
-JT
Sinclair nothing, this is the same FCC that engineered such a giveway of public airspace to private corporations it resulted in the worst public backlash in the Commission's history, forcing a repeal. Powell is unquestionably a whore of private media interests and acting in complete, almost criminal neglect of the FCC's mandate. If Powell calls for regulation of VOIP the smart money ignores the 'moral' stance and looks for who will benefit. My guess is he's doing this for his telco buddies.