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FCC Fines Company for Blocking Access to VoIP
peg0cjs writes "According to PCPro, the FCC has handed out a $15,000 fine to Madison River Communications Corp for blocking access to VoIP calls. The action is seen as a warning to other telcos not to prevent the growth of VoIP over their networks. The complaint was made to the FCC by two companies Vonage Holdings and Nuvio, which specialise in VoIP services. It appears that Vonage CEO Jeffrey Citron was willing to act on his earlier tirade about VoIP blocking." From the article: "The action is seen as a warning to other telcos not to prevent the growth of VoIP over their networks. Many of these companies see VoIP as a threat to their landline revenues as calls made over the internet can be made to anywhere in the world for the price of a local call."
Is something like me getting a $10 parking ticket, annoying but hardly worth acting on beyond mailing the puppy in...though I suppose the command to change policy as such will have an effect...
...in bed
Those of us who use VoIP should be friendly neighbors and use compression if possible to conserve bandwidth?
"...calls made over the internet can be made to anywhere in the world for the price of a local call."
Which is A Good Thing(tm). Suck it up Telcos!
But I thought we hate the FCC! I just don't know what to believe anymore!
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
So, can I use this precedence to have them unblock port 25 and 80 so I can run my mail and web server without any problems?
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Good to see the FCC actually doing something that gives consumers choice. Now only if we could get them to drop the stupid broadcast flag.
IANAL, but I assume the fine goes way up from there, right? If it cuts into the telco's bottom line so much $15,000 isn't a big price to pay to block it.
Thanks!
In my next postings I will include encoded voice messages as a series of ASCII tokens.
Better not mod them down, or you'll be fined for impeding competition...
(and yes, this is not meant seriously)
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Just something I've been wondering. Where does all of this money from fines go to? Janet Jackson netted the FCC some pretty decent change, so what happened to it?
I for one am sick of corps trying to preserve dieing business models by abusing existing power structures.
It will be interesting to see what will become of information infrastructure in this country in the next few years. IBM v Microsoft of the early 21st century is going to be Cable v. Telephone. Where it goes depends on the rules of the game. This decision firmly establishes that network transparency won't be sacrificed in the fray.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
$15,000? It doesn't seem like all that much.
It's good though to see some anti-(anti-competitive) behavior out of the FCC, though.
Is this potentially a dangerous precedent? That is really all that is done is port-blocking .. are we saying that now you can be fined for closing a port on your own equipement?
What happens we find out the latest virus want to attack on that port? Can we still be fined?
And really .. all VoIP is gonna do is kill "unlimited" bandwidth connections... don't think for a second that a TelCo won't jump after revenue.
The smart ones throttle back the quality of the connection. Thanks to the bursty nature of the internet, they can get away with making the quality total shit for 3rd party VoIP providers, while allcocating the necessary bandwidth and priority to their own VoIP services.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
First off, I'm happy that they did this to send a warning. I want innovation and I want competition to make things better.
Having said that, I find it deplorable that we fine a paltry $15,000 for stopping innovation yet fine broadcasters $500,000 per incident for "violations" that should be free speech.
I think we should amend the Constitution to say, "By the Corporations, for the Corporations".
"What the hell is an aluminum falcon?"
So now Slashdot is duping the story twice in the first posting. Nice.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
It's a no brainer that voIP is where things are going to end up. The simple solution is for the telco's to jump on that poney and ride it to the bank. The R&D is already done, the equipment prices have come down. While I don't have any figured to work with, I'm sure the return on investment if they plan correctly can't be that bad.
It's like the US post office issue, e-mail is causing them to loose money. Simple solution. USPS internet kiosks where you pay for time to use their system to access your e-mail. Those that don't have laptops/handhelds but have $1 for 30min of time would jump on it. The market is there, just have to have the right bait to real them in. Problem is that telco's like the USPS have been doing things the same way for so long, change is a very painfull process. Welp, take a pain pill and get moving you corporate lackies.
Trying to be different, just like everyone else.
I could be wrong but I believe this particular incident was anti-competition rather than for blocking certain traffic.
Interesting. It would appear that this action is seen as a warning to other telcos not to prevent the growth of VoIP over their networks.
Sounds like a small fish in the pond. A 15K fine is definitely going to make them pay attention.
And it's going to make the big players sit up and take notice.
Think of this more as a "warning shot across the bow" than a slap on the wrist.
Its a move in the right direction, but to the bigger telcos, $15,000 isn't that big of a hit. Especially when doing something blatantly unethical.
"The action is seen as a warning to other telcos not to prevent the growth of VoIP over their networks" Does this count as a dupe or will it need to read that quote a third time?
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
The FCC should fine this company US$15,000 per blocked call and the fine should attract interest at current rates. If this company has pockets as deep as those of M$, I suggest going further and holding the executives to account. I hope I am not being too "right wing" or extremist.
$15,000 is hardly a significant threat to a telco, it's more like a "warning ticket" given to a speeder that the cop is good buddies with.
When I think of the fines imposed on Howard Stern, it convinces me that they're not all that serious about limiting challenges to VOIP.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
Don't VOIP packets require higher priority than normal to keep quality decent? If so, how does everyone who is doing regular IP operations feel about their jobs being delayed in order to provide priority to VOIP users?
I believe the other VOIP company is named Nuvio rather than Nuvia.
Robert X. Cringely
The result from that. Companies like Vonage and Packet8 are crippled and it's legal too.
Specks
Batteries not included
Don't missundertand the following. I've been a VoIP user for two years now; but is now the time to complain to the FCC about ISPs blocking smtp/http/ftp also? What's the difference?
in not being inhibited. Many countries use the telephone system as a cash cow and as such, because there has been no competition, they have REALLY sub par POTS. VoIP would really cut into that revenue they generate from telephone calls making their government suffer. In the US the telephone company really is the last big holdout in the great analog to digital migration. It doesn't make sense that I can chat with my friends halfway around the world on my PC but get totally reamed when I call home to talk to my Mom. I just helped a charity switch to VoIP and now the biggest cost in their organization is now budgetable, they actually know how much they are going to pay each month.
Commenting on the case the FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell said, `the industry must adhere to certain consumer protection norms if the Internet is to remain an open platform for innovation.` He also gave a warning that the FCC will not allow companies to stifle innovation saying that the Commission `acted swiftly to ensure that Internet voice service remains a viable option for consumers`. I think that line might be brought up in the future...can you say broadcast flag?
Next we'll love SCO!
We've seen many dupes lately here on slashdot, so this is a welcome non-dupe, however, anyone else find it weird that in such a short summary there is essentially a dupe of the sentences from the article?
"According to PCPro, the FCC has handed out a $15,000 fine to Madison River Communications Corp for blocking access to VoIP calls. The action is seen as a warning to other telcos not to prevent the growth of VoIP over their networks. The complaint was made to the FCC by two companies Vonage Holdings and Nuvia, which specialise in VoIP services. It appears that Vonage CEO Jeffrey Citron was willing to act on his earlier tirade about VoIP blocking." From the article: "The action is seen as a warning to other telcos not to prevent the growth of VoIP over their networks. Many of these companies see VoIP as a threat to their landline revenues as calls made over the internet can be made to anywhere in the world for the price of a local call."
Ok this doesn't make any sense, why would the FCC do something nice unless someone was paying them off? conventional carriers need to secure infrastructures by either building them or renting bandwidth which of-course costs money, VoIP providers would seem to get allot of that bandwidth for free, of course the real end will occur when VoIP providers are not needed because everyone justs connects directly.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I know the FCC regulates communications, so there is some authority for them here, but...
... and if having the FCC - the same entity that seems to arbitrarily deem TV and radio shows "obscene" and/or "profane" and impose heavy fines as a result - regulate these matters is a good idea.
Isn't this sort of anti-competetive practice (and I do believe that is what the FCC's ruling stopped here, which is good) something more properly regulated by other federal/state entities? Maybe the SEC (for publicly held companies), or in civil courts under antitrust laws?
I just wonder why the FCC took care of this
I hope the land around you yields, a crop like all the other fields, and then your waiting might make sense...
I understand that ATT&T has pretty much abandoned circuit switching. Hasn't it already written off its entire circuit-switched physical plant?
This FCC decision lets ILECs know they dare not interfere with VOIP.
Quo Vadis?
When will the last circuit switched call in America be made? What will become of all that infrastructure? Or are reports of its death highly exaggerated?
Insert witty sig here.
I wonder if "The action is seen as a warning to other telcos not to prevent the growth of VoIP over their networks" or if "The action is seen as a warning to other telcos not to prevent the growth of VoIP over their networks"
Now, THAT's an offtopic post.
My girlfriend moved into a swanky building with broadband pre-installed.
One day, she can't send email anymore via an external server set up to allow relay after POP authentication. Verizon has blocked all outgoing SMTP because most of their users have become spam-spewing zombies. It was easier for them to do this rather than turn off individuals.
Seriously, can my girlfriend complain to the FCC about this? Or, because email isn't as easily monetized a service as VOIP, they simply won't care?
jh
can someone explain why the FCC fined them (business) for blocking another (business) for essentially free phone calls while on the other hand bans cities from providing free internet access.?
The FCC shoulda just dropped "The Hammer". Flush that ya #*@%!.
Then there's the issue with overseas service. The undersea cables are supported with revenue from phone calls, and bandwidth is limited. Financing cables with the "all you can eat" Internet model is going to be interesting.
I don't see any way this can be good for local telcos, and maybe not for overseas carriers either. It may be time to sell any shares you own.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
It's OK to be extremist when your backing a liberal agenda.
:P I'm actually guessing Vonage is completely down since multiple people can't ping them right now and my phone just gives me a busy tone when I dial a number. This is great, now I get to rely on Comcast, a Netgear Router, VOIP adapter, and vonage to be able to make a phone call....
I think control of VoIP is outside the mandate of the FCC.
New companies that offer VoIP are not covered by the FCC. These are companyies are "common carriers" and protected by there laws.
You either have FCC regulation and the protection of the "common carriers" laws or your on your own. For example is you are VoIP company and not considered a "common carrier" then If someone uses VoIP for criminal reasons you could be considered part of the facilitator. Common Carrier status protects a carrier from legal liability for what it transports.
The legal liability of allowing someone who is 'legal liability' for what it transports to use your lines from which you are protected via the common carrier status has interesting consequences. For example: if a 3rd party VoIP provider (who is not regulated and is not Common Carrier) allows a kidnapper to make a ransom demand to through its VoIP line then over a common carrier lines then who is responsible?
Just becuase a company is protected by the Common Carrier status does not mean it should extend to the 3rd party VoIP provider who use there lines.
An very interesting legal point if the FCC is trying to make the Common Carriers accept 3rd party VoIP calls.
Allowing 3rd party VoIP providers to use Common Carrier lines puts unacceptable risk or damage upon the Common Carrier and hence they should be legally allowed refuse service to such parties.
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
My vonage lines at home now do not work (with a fast-busy when I try to dial in), and I cannot connect to www.vonage.com from my office. Coincidence?
Underloved Movies and Pub Quiz: donotquestionme.org
Well, we didn't really BLOCK them: class-map match-all COMCAST-VOIP-CONTROL match dscp af31 class-map match-all COMCAST-VOICE match dscp ef match access-list 101 / COMCAST SUBNETS class-map match-all VONAGE-PACKET8-VOICE match rtp ! policy-map WE-HAVE-CONTROL class COMCAST-VOICE priority percent 95 class COMCAST-CONTROL priority percent 4.9 class VONAGE-PACKET8-VOICE priority percent 0.1 ! Interface ALL ! service-policy output WE-HAVE-CONTROL
This blocked me from sending emails tagged as originating from my domain name.
I voted with my feet and am now a happy customer of Sonic.net (based in Santa Rosa, but serving the Greater Bay Area).
But I am still pissed off about Earthlink blocking traffic to destination port 25 (SMTP) and would enjoy it if a regulatory agency fined them.
$15000 seems like a joke, though.
Dedicated Linux servers (root access) $45 p.M.
I'm a vonage user, after logging into the website I'm greeted with this, coincidence?:
Service Announcements
Customers may be experiencing an issue with receiving inbound calls and placing outbound calls due to a network issue. This problem is also impacting availability of our web site.
Our engineers are aware of the issue and are working to resolve it as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience.
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-Xenocrates
So, do we love the FCC today or do we still hate them?
-ted
The last nail has been driven into the coffin of the incumbent carriers.
The only way they can compete is to start peddling DSL to everyone and then selling their own VoIP. The thing though is that all VoIP calls touch a switch at some point or another.
For example, when I make a call to say another Vonage customer in my same rate center technically the call never really takes advantage of the local loops or trunking attached to the Paetec switch we're both homed on, but we do use switching fabric.
But lets say I call my father in Florida. It travels pretty much pure IP to a Paetec or Focal CO in Florida which then completes the function of gateway of the PSTN.
To this point the VoIP providers have been able to skirt issues such as universal service, E911 surcharges, TDD surcharges, mandated line fees, etc. and I believe they're rightfully doing so.
It is a disruptive technology, one that has gotten the notice of the incumbent carriers. I'm so happy the FCC levied the fine against a carrier for blocking VoIP though - it sets a great precedent. It stops the games of Theodore Vail from occuring again nearly one hundred years later.
I know some people run warez/kiddie porn/whatever on it, but if the bandwidth is capped at a certain amount, within what you'd get with regular service, why don't they allow these to be ran? My website doesn't get a lot of traffic currently, maybe 200MB/month and that's (relatively speaking) a lot - I know many people with plain-text websites who get much less. It's not like people will easily find your site anyway because odds are you're located by dynamic IP address without a FQDN. I really don't understand what the ISP has to lose here:-)
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
Why should the telcos be forced to carry a service that undercuts their own telephony operation? It's like movie theaters being forced to allow patrons to bring in their own food.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
I work for a small cable provider. We also offer cablemodem service and phone service, all over the coax network. We make more money *per-customer* on the phone service than anything else.
Vonage isn't available in our area yet, but when it comes, our phone service is absolutely fucked. Vonage is what, $25/month for unlimited calls? We charge that much for 500 minutes of calls per month. And, of course, long distance is extra.
But you know what? I don't care. Vonage and it's ilk are GOOD THINGS. There's no reason that all communications systems shouldn't move to IP-based networks. Yeah, it's going to be the end of the "small" service providers, but so what? They're living on borrowed time anyway.
I'm just waiting for high-speed wireless internet to become ubiquitous. Once everyone can snag a couple of megabits out of the air no matter where they are, even the cell phone companies are going to be screwed. Unless, of course, they become wireless internet providers. Which is what they should do, of course.
If blocking VoIP is not part of the contract (EULA or whatever) that the customer signed, then the ISP is at fault. But if the ISP says it will block VoIP in the contract, then how can FCC stop it? Isn't it a little like blocking incoming connections on some ports (like 80)?
Not if you agreed to the TOS that you wouldn't run any servers while connected to their service...
Yes, normally you have to follow your contracts (even unwritten contracts).
However, if the FCC says it has to be done one way, then contract be damned, you do it the way the FCC says it.
Instead of embracing the new technology, adopting it, and even selling/profiting from it... they decide to stifle it and bludgeon it with a stick in the hopes that it will die and people won't talk about it anymore.
They need to learn to appropriately respond to what the market wants, not control what they can get.
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
But I still don't like this FCC fine. Basically we have a Federal agency coming and telling a private company what they may and may not do on their private network. That scares me. If they can do that to a telco what else are they going to do? Are they going to tell the telcos they must host spam sites? Would they force me to host sites that I find morally objectionable?
I understand that there is the idea that telcos are common carriers, and if they are common carriers then they have to carry all traffic. But I would rather see the protections that common carriers have be broadened to more types of businesses, rather than having common carriers be subjected to more regulation from the FCC.
Blocking is often futile, but rate limiting it with a Packeteer to unusable levels works much better.
Grrrr!!!
If only if the telco companies had donated more to
the political campaign, this would not have happened. Ah well.. better luck in 2006 telco.
A bit much for this purpose, too many hit points.
my cable network response is bad enough. it's going to really suck when everyone starts watching TV and chatting on the phone over the 'Net
BC
Phonecompanyisp: Block VOIP, no one is using our phone services anymore.
.0002 each
FCC: Nope can't do that, Won't let ya.
PhoneCompanyISP: Ok, Charge $.0002 per each packet.
PostOffice: Hey give us $.0001 per packet because no one sends regular mail anymore!
User: What!! $18.00 Dial up
$18.00 90,000 packets @
$36.00 total.
(bill used to only be $18.00)
Throttling might be detectable too, because QoS data may stay on the packet (dunno, that is too low level for me).
But imagine if you just drop packets intermittently? Especially after a few minutes, when normal testing would have checked everything off as successful.
any UDP system would have dropouts, and I assume VoIP is UDP for the latency.
Vonage has been down much of today and part of yesterday. Perhaps they are censoring themselves, despite what the FCC says?
in other news FCC fines company blocking mail server
Couldn't Vonage then just sign up for a Comcast VoIP account and watch the packets, determine what tagging was added and then modify their product to also add the tag?
I pay for Telephone and cable modem service through a local provider that has a utility monopoly in the area I am in. This company has completely blocked all VOIP traffic coming in over certain ports. The only way for them to "unblock" these ports is to pay them a $10 unblocking fee every month.
Although they state that the reason they are doing this is to malicious traffic, it is inherently obvious that their idea of malicious traffic does not stop at viruses and hackers.
Um, then why do they charge up to $1.75 per minute to call Kiribati? Even a call to France runs $0.03/min. And their "unlimited" price of $29/month is double what I would pay a local carrier (less ld charges).
http://www.vonage.com/intrates.php
In major markets, there are so many possibilities these days for ISPs, I'm not sure why people accept this crap from providers. Sure, Comcast and Earthlink don't allow this, so why use them? CenturyTel has no problem with my mail and web server, and for a very low $5 more a month even provides me with a static IP.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
What makes you think they are trying to preserve a dieing business? What they are trying to do is prevent competition with an emerging business.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Verizon is trying to block spam, the same is done with SBC. All you have to do is contact the abuse department to "opt-out" of the blocking. I had the SMTP outgoing port blocked by SBC, and I just contacted the abuse department and told them to unblock it. 24 hours later, they told me to cycle my modem, and volia, outbound SMTP!
So try to contact them first, the FCC also usually put your case a lower priority if you do not first try to resolve it with the phone company first.
This just in from the department of redundancy department:
... The action is seen as a warning to other telcos not to prevent the growth of VoIP over their networks.
The action is seen as a warning to other telcos not to prevent the growth of VoIP over their networks.
Poster should use the preview function and his brain.
So, why not just change the listening port on your web server to something other than 80? This is a basic HTTP configuration and only requires and additional :port at the end of the URL.
... well ... you're SOL there.
Sendmail
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
The problem I see with this is, the telcos are deregulated, they own the lines, and through blocking VoIP, they're merely protecting not only their companies' assets, but also trying to ensure they have work, and funding for future expansion.
Granted the FCC stepped in to hand out a slap-on-the-wrist-fine, this is only the tip of the iceberg. We can expect to see more and more companies attempt to block VoIP and in all sorts of creative ways too. If I'd gotten a bill from the FCC for 15-grand claiming I'm not letting a service I do NOT support, use my equipment, I would have told them to fold it up to all points and cram it. The most they can do is slap the telcos with a "monopolistic practice" fine, regualte the fucking lines so I don't have to pay $55/month for basic telco service, and be done with it.
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
The poster's information is total BS.
From a technical perspective, a server is anything that sits around waiting for requests - for instance, a VOIP client or IM client or game program or P2P file sharing program are all servers, and a video conferencing connection is a server when you've got it turned on. But cable modem ISPs generally are happy about all of these except the P2P (and that's as much because it's "Stealing content", when the Television side of their company is in the content business, so that's obviously bad.) A Web Server is obviously intended to ship lots of content upstream, which the cable companies didn't like.
But they also often banned "mail servers", which are the harmless end of the email direction - they don't want something sending _out_ lots of mail, especially spam, but that's really the "client" direction of client-server interaction, and the server end mostly uses downstream bandwidth that they've got plenty of. So for this application, they're considering a server to be "a program that does something useful for somebody", and they're also viewing mail servers as "something businesses use", which is bad because either "businesses are willing to pay more for service so we should ban them on cheap accounts" (which some companies also tried doing with VPNs) or "businesses get grumpy if their service goes down, and we don't want to change our repair cost models to accommodate them", or "anything that receives lots of mail probably also sends lots of mail, which is bad."
In my case, I'm using DSL instead of cable largely because the cable modem companies really want to sell to couch potatoes, and arbitrarily ban applications they don't understand or are scared by, and at least in the past they had rules against sharing multiple computers on a single connection. I want an *Internet* connection, not an alternative television feed, and I'm using the DSL ISP I use partly because they give out static addresses and partly because they've got a strong philosophical position that if you've got an Internet connection, all the bits are yours, and you should be able to do absolutely anything you want with it except spamming and cracking.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Maybe if vonage wasn't using TFTP to get their configs, they would find themselves blocked less.
TFTP is blocked on many networks due to the fact its a popular mechanism for trojans to download and install their ad/spyware.
There are many other ways to make Vonage not work very well without blocking it. If you pay for a best effort internet connection with me (which almost all cable modem service is) you aren't promised anything. You can still connect to vonage, but you have no guarantee of anything. If i set all premium traffic (stuff people are actually paying extra for) to a higher QOS level and there is congestion anywhere, youre VOIP call goes bye bye. I'd like to see the FCC fine that.
Vonage is a parasitic application that rides over the infrastructure of others. They have no agreements to pay anyone for the infrastructure they are taking advantage of. On my network, P2P is more preferred than Vonage so you better stop downloading before trying to make that call.
And then you have the geniuses who subscribe to vonage and then try to sue the cable company because their 911 call failed. You aren't paying me for E911 service. You better take it up with your voice provider, Vonage. If they want me to provide that service for you, they need to pay for it, as I do.
This isn't any kind of victory for VOIP. It's just another sign that IP is going to be regulated.
Shouldn't an ISP have a right NOT to carry any sort of traffic they don't want?
It's a crappy thing to do but as long as the ISP makes the restriction clear to their users I can't see the problem. Might not be a good business move but it should be their call.
If I can get phone calls routed across my toaster can the government force my electric company to carry the signals?
How much government involvement do you want in your Internet business? With regulation comes taxes. With taxes comes more regulation. And therein lies the dark side of the Democracy.
actually, IAX with G729 only uses 13.5Kbps
To hell with these stupid anti-competitive practices and traditional telcos. They've shafted us for decades, and are still trying hard so they can continue shafting us some more. Competition? What competition? More like collusion if you ask me.
:)
I had Verizon for over a decade and was getting charged around $45 per month on basic phone service + call waiting + caller ID. Can you believe that? $45 just for THAT! There are all these stupid surcharges and taxes and bundled nonsense.
To top it off, they have this "local long distance" scam where I get charged like $0.13 just to call a place that's less than 30 miles away. And last time... I made an international call to Taiwan (lame AT&T) and was charged the equivalent of a phone sex call! It was like $2 or $3 per minute!
These guys have dicked me around for way too long for me to ever forgive them. I don't care what packages they will offer in the future, but I'm done paying ransome to these scumbags. I hope you guys join me in this effort. We all know that when they have no more choice, they'll hop on the VOIP wagon and advertise like they're on our side, but you know it'll be because they've run out of options, not because they give a $hit. You can put a sheep's clothing on a fox any day, but still it's a fox underneath.
Ok rants over.
eTrade SUCKS
How many more times do people need to be told that this is NOT ABOUT ISP LEVEL BLOCKING.
Instead, the FCC fined a local phone company for filtering out incoming calls that originated on Vonage.
In other words, you have an ordinary POTS phone and your buddy who has Vonage cannot call you because your POTS provider says "We don't allow Vonage callers to call our customers".
It's not true, at least as far as Verizon Online is concerned. VOL does not block egress port 25. If you're on VOL and you can't relay, something else is to blame.
Now, from what you described (swanky building with preinstalled broadband), your GF is on Verizon Avenue. Those bastards could have different policies, since they're not VOL.
But, if it is VOL, yes, you can complain to the FCC. The company will launch a formal appeal and you will have your problem fixed. Any technical escalation made by any other means will probably drive you mad, since it will be fruitless, take weeks, and ultimately result in unspecified reasons why you can't be helped.
Don't freak out at the employees, because they're powerless and will resent you (possibly leading to them actively try to undermine you, for reasons that are obvious if you've watched Office Space). Instead, just write the FCC.
Well, here's hoping I'm not fired in the morning.
His prediction: VoIP may have seen its best days and faces slow extinction by cartels of carriers using QOS to throttle all but their own VoIP services.
--- All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
-Steve
No, though I looked at Speakeasy as well. I'm using sonic.net. Their policies and prices are fairly similar, and were a slightly better match for my needs. They're a smaller operation, which I've found is usually a good thing (smaller service providers are usually more responsive, unless they get overwhelmed or run out of money, in which case they often fail badly.) The other interesting thing about Sonic.net at the time was that they were working on 802.11 rooftop mesh radio applications up in Santa Rosa area, where they're based, which had the potential to be really cool if it worked out.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Cox Communications Blocks VOIP Ports 5060-5062 and 10000-20000 on residential accounts. They state that if you want to use those ports you have to purchase the Business Class Internet Service and that the TOS States that they have the right to block any port they deem necessary on residential accounts....Hmm didn't the FCC just fine Madison Communications $15k for doing this same thing?