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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.""
Regardless of the merits of regulating (or not regulationg) VoIP, at the core I'm uncomfortable with the idea of regulating specific types of Internet traffic ... kind of a change from the traditional egalitarian data-cloud "all packets are equal" ideal. I haven't really thought this out, but I just have a bad feeling about it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
This regulation is equivalent of a slippery tube child toy such as this
It's harder to get a grip on, much less tax on it.
Kinda confused about this VoIP crap - if a company is offering a service, for a price which involves you having some sort of phone-like device plugged into a socket in your home, then it is a phone, no-matter if it goes through the old phone system, the cell-system, the Internet, a satellite or some sort of magick pixie communication system. If you're talking about some sort of free software that connects to someone's IP directly using your existing net-connection or uses distributed routing or whatever than thats basically instant messaging with some voice-feature, what are you going to regulate? AIM?
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It seems pretty obvious to me that shared public resources (physical lines connecting private property together) may need to be regulated to prevent monopolies, while anything that isn't intrinsically limited (multiple protocols over the internet) doesn't need such regulation.
The only reason for the regulation, after all, is to permit competition. Right?
With the VoIP regulation debate, this dichotomy between limited and unlimited resources is often overlooked, when it's actually the only important issue.
The physically shared and limited public connections should be regulated to prevent monopoly. Purely software protocols should be completely immune to regulation.
What does this mean for free services such as Skype, or even voice chat for games and such?
I could be wrong, but a line in the actual article makes it sound like they're reducing Bell and Telus' ability to treat VoIP as a loss-leader, basically making it impossible for other players like Vonage or Shaw to compete. It's not that they're regulating broadly, they're just warning Bell and Telus that they're being watched, and they can't shut out competition but charging $0.50/month for VoIP. Still not ideal, but a lot less terrible than it seems at first.
The world's only surviving livewriter.
This ruling has little to do with technology and more to do with business and competition. Skype, FWD et. al. will still be able to offer their free services (which are actually financed by advertising and other means).
This will allow new companies to start offering value-added, non-PSTN phone service without being shut out by the two current major phone service providers using artifically low prices.
Basically, a Good Thing because competition is good.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
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?
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
People have done what you have mentioned. However, it requires purchasing equipment and setting things up yourself.
The CRTC has nothing to do with your lack of being able to buy channels individually (with the exception of requiring a certain number of those channels to be Canadian). It is the cable/satellite companies that put them into budles. Most cable/satellite companies allow you to purchase digital channels separately.
With analogue cable, the reason they are in bundles is because you just can't flip a switch and enable access to them. They have to go out to your place and setup the connection. It is just easier -- and cheaper for them -- to offer three or so packages than to offer 50 individual channels.
I suggest you read the CRTC website which explains in detail about your beefs. If you are still not happy, file a complaint with them. They surprisenly do go through those things and respond.
The Slashdot cover story gets it wrong. The CRTC is not regulating all VoIP providers. It is regulating Incumbent telephone companies.
There are two types of local phone companies. Incumbents were given legal monopolies until recently, with Canada following the USA in opening up competition. So Bell Canada, Aliant, Telus and Sasktel are Incumbents in Canada. They all have much more than a 50% market share. This is generally accepted as giving them monopoly power -- the ability to set prices in a manner that no competitor can equal.
All other telephone companies are Competitive. They are startups, or at least new to the phone business. In the USA, the term of art is CLEC, and they range from big cable companies down to one-man shops. (I personally know some of the latter.) They have no market power to speak of. Vonage is not a phone company, at least under US rules, but it does provide something resembling local phone service. (Technically it's reselling the services of other CLECs, such as Focal and Paetec.)
The CRTC decided (it's not formally out yet) that Incumbent local phone companies, whose prices are regulated because they have monopoly power, cannot offer VoIP services at unregulated prices. They can't offer cut-rate service that puts their competitors out of business (remember John D. Rockefeller -- sell cheap until the competitor is gone, then raise the price big time). EVERYBODY ELSE can do as they please. Shaw, Rogers, Vonage, Broadvoice, Yukon Dave's Trading Post and Telephone Service Company -- they can offer VoIP withut price regulation.
The CRTC is doing a far better job than the US FCC has been doing over the past few years. This decision is quite reasonable.