VoIP Services to be Regulated in Canada

jeffcm writes "It seems that the CRTC, Canada's equivalent to the FCC has decided that VoIP pricing and services should be regulated. From The Globe & Mail: "The CRTC confirmed that it has rejected arguments from Bell and Telus that VoIP should be left unregulated like other on-line applications. If their argument had won the day, their competitors say, the incumbent phone companies would have been allowed to limit the number of new entrants by slashing prices in the short term.""

Comments

hmm

[merdark]

What does this mean for free services such as Skype, or even voice chat for games and such?

Re:Not quite what it sounds like

[MrAndrews]

You over-estimate the critical mind of Canadian bureaucracy. They don't do things to help out rich corporate friends, they do things taking into account a small part of a complex problem, and it typically pisses half the country off. Regulating VoIP in this case is almost certainly an attempt to randomly pound on Bell and make them cry (punishment for ExpressVu?). I would be surprised if the eventual regulations imposed didn't closely match what some smaller shop was providing already. The real fun will come in a year or two when Bell makes the point that half the leading VoIP providers in Canada are U.S.-based, and then regulations will change back in favour of Bell and Telus.

Well, I hope they make changes...

[Mr. Flibble]

I just got Asterisk@Home 1.0 up and running last night, and I was researching Canadian VOIP providers (specifically on Vancouver Island). I found, to my surprise that almost all of them support MGCP and not SIP.

Apparently, Asteriks works great with SIP, but is a real beast with MGCP...

So personally I hope that this regulation brings in smaller players who support SIP and will allow me to hook up a local VOIP connection in Victoria...

As an aside - are there any Canadian (preferably in B.C.) users of Asterisk out there who are running a good VOIP setup? If so, what provider do you use?