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More Fallout From FCC VoIP Decision
EconomyGuy writes "While many of us have been celebrating the recent FCC decision to keep regulation off of VoIP, but there may be some undesirable results for those progressive geeks who believe government should do more than provide military defense. As VoIP takes off as a replacement for the traditional copper-wire network, local and state governments are going to lose more and more funding for important services like 911 and Universal Service."
.. but have netcraft confirmed it? Seriously, they'll just place a tax on a per megabyte basis.. Nothing to see here move along.. Simon.
If no taxes can be levvied on POTS anymore for funding emergency services and the like, there will surely be an alternative way of collecting those taxes.
A flat tax, for example - say $0.50/month per resident. That should cover 911-expenses.
I'm not American , but I see America going the wrong way and cutting funding for the wrong things (ok, it's not a socialist state) ... Education, Healthcare, Emergency services are things which have intangible returns on investment.
Imagine a police force based on capitalismQuidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
I'm sure that it will never become an issue. 911 is such an important, fundamental service, it will always be offered. Besides, as Big Brotherish as the government is these days, you could probably just call the free "terrorist hint line" and tell them Osama Bin Laden is trying to steal your car...
They can't let me have internet and VoIP without paying taxes on that too?
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Seriously!!! After getting shot in my 91 CRX by two thugs high on LCD, PCP, and drunk, I called the cops from a store as soon as I fled the scene. It took 30 minutes. 30 fucking minutes before I got a call back from a COP in the area through his CB radio (patched in through 911)!
It's a long story. But basically, the only that human scum got cought was because the driver passed out at the wheel.
Life is not for the lazy.
I would argue that it's simply not the government's role to burden communications with taxes.
One argument in the article is "not taxing this is not fair, because regular phones are taxed". This is a true statement, but I would argue that the *existing* taxes are an arbitrary joke: Americans are forced to pay per minute rates on "long distance" (meaning, another state, even though the actual route to another state and the same one could end up using the exact same satellite). Why? Well, it's because the goverment *taxes* based on per minute usage. Stating that the only way to achieve equality is to apply the same flawed system equally is not good logic.
If the functionality of 911 is so important (I believe it is), then other ways can be brought about to pay for it. With the current market penetration of phones, it's not unreasonable to assume that almost everyone has access to 911, so an alternate method could be used, one that taxes everyone just as the current system does. It could even be rolled trivially into property taxes, it's can't be much because it's itemized on my monthly phone bill, and it is tiny.
Saying that the only way we'll have goverment phone services or local governments gaining relevant revenue is to allow regulation of VOIP is beyond silly. There may be a difficult time of transition, but it's clear that progress is on the side of the new technology.
But it's clear from the article what the *real* problem is:
"The City of Seattle in 2003 collected $30 million from telephone utility taxes, its fourth largest source of revenue after property, B&O, and sales taxes."
Here the argument becomes, "A technology to allow people to communicate was developed, and we allowed governments to tax it. Now that an alternative has come along, we need to allow governments to tax it or else the governments won't be getting as much of your money as they are used to."
This is the same logic that would shut down an invention that generates endless free energy (Look at that electricity tax / the private sector that exists to deliver energy!), that would shut down an invention that creates delicious food out of thin air (sales tax / destroying the livelihood of farmers), a great solution in medicine that allowed people to be free of their various prescription drug dependencies... the same idea would oppose all of these things.
Stepping out of utopia land, we can address the one thing we *can* replicate nearly for free, and realize that it is the same logic opposing free software.
It is not good logic.
local and state governments are going to lose more and more funding for important services like 911 and Universal Service
I would agree 911 is an important phone service and should be provided.
But all the other taxes?? I don't think so.
The universl service fund was established to provide phone to rural areas. The question I have is "aren't rural areas wired already?". About internet for schools -- I say let the people who go to those schools pay for their own internet like I do. Libraries? I pay through the teeth through property taxes (Utah) already for library facilities.
So much as the federal taxes go -- the federal tax was placed on the phone to pay for the war of 1812 -- isn't that war over and paid for yet? I know it has been used to pay for all the other wars since then, maybe I don't like to see war financed through my phone use.
I know this is an oversimplification, but this represents a deep resentment of the government as it stands today, and I'm not to sure if I care if it crashes and burns. I'm sure others feel the same way -- that Washington (and many local governments) have lost touch with reality, as have the voters who keep "liars" in office on the basis of "moral" grounds.
Yes I'm mad. Phone service can go away. I'll start to use carrier pigeon if necessary.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
and treat VoIP calls and pots calls the same?
Wouldn't somebody with a VoIP phone servuce provider like http://www.usbphone.com.au/ that has a call relay station that can call land lines not be considered to be Universally covered?
After all some places are too expensive to do last mile wiring for for pots, but you can justify using wireless links to cover that area for wireless internet.
In this case, the govt might be able to achieve 911 and universal service without spending a dime, and pushing the cost back onto the consumer... which is either a bad or a good thing depending if you're blue or red... but the services will not need to disappear.
(ps... is it just me or is it odd that "red" meant "communist" last century and "freemarketeer" today?)
local and state governments are going to lose more and more funding for important services like 911 and Universal Service.
Almost everybody agrees that 911 service is necessary, but it is far from obvious why this cannot be paid for by properly visible government spending, rather then trying to sneak it in like a backdoor tax on a specific service. Governments love to add little taxes here and there so as to make it opaque how much they are actually spending, leading a government with it's fingers everywhere hindering progress with useless regulation aimed only at preserving dying industries and the revenue government derives from them. Which is exactly what our "progressive" friend is saying should happen to VoIP.
As for Universal Service, give me a break. People who live in rural areas don't pay special taxes so that I can get clean air, silence, and nice natural surroundings in the middle of the city. Why the hell should they? After all I chose to live here, which it's upsides (like 8 megabit broadband to the apartment) and its downsides. The same goes for people who want to live in rural areas: they chose to live where they do, and that means taking the benefits as well as the consquences, instead of crying that others should have to pay for your luxuries.
Perhaps one day when I am older I will begin to understand how a human mind can work that calls itself progressive, and then attacks progress because it might get in the way large governments clectrocractic systems. I certainly don't now...
http://www.researchedge.com/uss/dev.html
DEVELOPMENT AND INSTITUTIONALIZING OF UNIVERSAL SERVICE
Historical Context:
The term "Universal Service" was introduced in 1907 by Theodore Vail, then President of AT&T. However, in the early twentieth century it had quite a different meaning in practice. Due to basic incompatibility or a lack of interconnection, competing local phone companies could often not connect their respective customers to each other. "Dual service" or subscribing to both services with the attendant duplicate wiring and equipment was common, especially for businesses. Thus, Universal Service at first meant compatibility and interconnectivity of competing phone services that we today take for granted. It was only later that the term "Universal Service" became associated with a social compact to connect those disadvantaged by geography, income or other factors.
The Mann-Elkins Act of 1910 gave regulatory jurisdiction for interstate telecommunications to the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), defining telephone companies as "common carriers" who were "to provide service on request at just and reasonable rates, without unjust discrimination or undue preference." The Communications Act of 1934, though not naming "Universal Service" specifically, lays out its basic tenets "so as to make available, so far as possible, to all people of the United States a rapid, efficient, nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges." Establishing the separate Federal Communications Commission, the act gave the commission new powers to regulate tariffs and services but expressly limited federal authority to interstate service. In 1994, the sixtieth anniversary of the Communications Act of 1934, President Bill Clinton said:
When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed this historic legislation so many years ago, few realized the dramatic changes in communications that the future would hold. Yet that stroke of the pen ushered in the beginnings of the Information Age, an era in which vast amounts of knowledge flow freely across continents and circle the globe in a matter of seconds.
Today, as we celebrate the vision of the authors of the Communications Act, we are still defining the role that telecommunications technology will play in our society. With a universe of electronic information at our fingertips, we can better educate our people, promote democracy, save lives, and create jobs across America. As we work to enhance the partnership between the public and private sectors, we continue to draw inspiration from the original Communications Act, which has long served to benefit all of our citizens and to propel our nation into the future.
(Federal Communications Law Journal, Vol. 47, No. 2, December, 1994)
There subsequently developed a series of programs, structures and protocols to encourage and enforce the expectation that basic local and long distance telephone service be available to all. The major components insuring ubiquitous availability of plain old telephone service (POTS) and other consumer services such as "free" broadcasting have been as follows:
Universal Service Fund (USF):
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), anticipating the breakup of the Bell System, established the National Exchange Carrier Association (NECA) in 1983 as a membership association of local telephone companies. NECA is a non-profit company directly regulated by the FCC to establish and administer interstate access revenues, access charge pooling and administer the Universal Service Fund (USF) to provide assistance to telephone companies in high-cost areas (primarily rural, but defined as those with costs in excess of 115 percent of the national average). The funds are collected from major long distance carriers and administered and dispensed by NECA. The funds are used to extend telephone service to previously unserved areas, help pay for system extensions and to keep basic rates low.
D
What? It's the 21st century. The Universal Service fee is bullshit. What part of the country is without telephone lines?
The Universal Service fee is a subsidy for the well to do. Developers subdivide former farmland and put nice big houses on them. The phone companies need to build phone lines out to them, putting up poles, stringing cable and what not. The Universal Service Fee is a way for them to recoup that loss.
It isn't about providing phones to poor underpriveledges children in Arkansas.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
...how huge corporations can extol the virtues of the 'American way,' 'free trade,' 'competition,' and the like only until the moment that they realize that they've become completely obsolete? Then they fight like drowning rats using silly arguments like 'not giving us your money any more will be BAD for you... Pay no attention to the progress behind the curtain.' This sounds durprisingly similar to the arguement that Verizon threw up earlier this week to prevent municipal Wi-Fi. Whatever. I say good riddance to 'em and bring on the progress.
---As my daddy used to tell me: "You gotta be smart before you can be a smartass."
911 service, access for the disabled, etc. are all things that are important to society as a whole. For example, the indirect benefit I derive from having the disabled be able to access the phone system are unrelated to whether I own a telephone myself. So, they should be paid for by society as a whole--through regular taxes.
The likely reason these are surcharges on your telephone bill is because Congress was trying to hide taxes in "user fees" again, knowing full well that most people would end up paying for these anyway, not only as part of their own phone bill (which they could perhaps avoid) but also in higher prices for goods and services.
If these are federally mandated services, then the federal government should pay for it out of federal taxes. If they have to be raised in order to do that, that's OK: you were paying the taxes anyway already, and at least making it part of the regular tax system means that (1) you see who is responsible for the expense (the federal government), (2) a separate bureaucracy for administering those taxes can get eliminated, and (3) phone companies have a harder time hiding phoney "federal" charges among real ones on their bills when such charges don't exist anymore.
The USF is to pay for the infrastructure in rural areas. Plenty of rich people live in rural areas. So I agree, fuck republicans, dirt cheap phone and data service for liberals. I don't want to talk to anyone Wyoming anyway.
But you could learn a thing or two about economics. See no one wants to pay for infrastructure, but an infrastructure that's cheap for everyone to use generates a lot more commerce which inevitably enriches everyone. People like you, who don't advocate a cheap infrastructure, are really anti-trade, and pro Scrooge McDuck. And when the pendulem swings back, it always does, the consequences might make the reformations of Teddy and Freddy Rossevelt seem tame.
Taxes on phones, or any of the other basics, are highly regressive, and unless there is a good social reason to discourage use of that good (like with energy), it hurts the poor disproportionatly to tax them.
I see no reason why 911 and other services cannot be supported by a tiny portion of an income or wealth tax. Alternatively, part of an airplane tax+tariff (a CO2 tax or a airplace fuel tax+tariff) could be used to pay for it.
More and more I am objecting to phrases like "progressive geeks who believe government should do more than provide military defense". Some of us believe more government than the minimum is oppressive and that greatly reducing the size of the government would be progressive (i.e., "progress").