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VoIP Services to be Regulated in Canada

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hand-of-the-state dept.

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.""

5 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. Regulating internet traffic? Hm. by ScrewMaster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Regulating internet traffic? Hm. by Trepalium · · Score: 5, Informative

      I don't believe this is regulating VoIP as much as it is regulating VoIP subscription services. In this context, they are not regulating the internet traffic but rather the internet businesses.

      --
      I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
    2. Re:Regulating internet traffic? Hm. by kfg · · Score: 5, Informative

      Even VoIP has to come out of the Internet at some point and into a conventional telco exchange, right?

      Wrong. To interface with POTS the statement is a tautology, but there is nothing inherent about sending voice over IP that requires POTS.

      Stop thinking "telephone" and start thinking "voice communications."

      People will, however, hate you for doing that, because they can't charge you an extra $25/mo., or regulate you, for "voice communications," because that power is already in your hands the instant you have an internet connection. I sit here in the US and talk to my friends in England and Germany just fine, and without involving the conventional phone companies or Vonage. The current structure is trying to use their inertia to leverage themselves into an industry that already has no raison d'etre.

      But it's true, I don't "phone" them. I "internet" them.

      Free your mind and the rest will follow.

      KFG

  2. There's only one important criterion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Monopolists are regulated, nobody else by isdnip · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.