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France Demands Skype Register As a Telco
jfruh writes "Skype made a name for itself by largely bypassing the infrastucture — and the costs, and the regulations — of the legacy telecommunications industry. But now the French telecom regulator wants to change that, at least in France. At issue is not the service's VoIP offering, but rather the Skype Out service that allows users to dial phones on traditional networks. Regulators say that this service necessitates that Skype face the same regulations as other telecoms."
You are right - I just checked mine (CallCentric), and their rate is 0.0198 USD to France, while Skype is 0.023 USD.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Just to clarify for those of you who don't live in France, Free is a local utility with low cost plans. Cheap mobile (I pay about $25/month for unlimited calls within France, unlimited calls to 40 countries, unlimited texts, and 3GB/month at 4G speeds). Cheap at-home triple play.
--<Mike>--
Skype in this case is taking the place of an inter-exchange carrier as described generally in:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interexchange_carrier
In the US, these entities are in fact regulated, and I imagine its the same in France. If they're acting in the same fashion (but with slightly different physical characteristics), why wouldn't those same laws apply to them? If you want fully de-regulate the long distance phone providers as being telecommunications entities that's one thing, but applying one set of rules because its half tethered off the internet doesn't change the nature of what these companies do.
Bye!
So, we have those regulations in Australia too, and the sky didn't fall.
IP Telephony providers have had very little problem complying with this archaic regulation.
The clincher is that it's just as difficult to tell where a call originates when it's on a mobile network. You can, at best, tell what tower it is on. Not much use on a block with a high-rise apartment building.
With IP, the theory goes:
1. If the call originates from an IP Address that is fixed (eg. DSL) in location, give that location.
2. If it's not, but you know the address of the IP, give that location
3. Otherwise, give the billing address of the customer's service.
The problem in Australia is that the database isn't at all dynamic. You put the address in and in a few days it's available to emergency services - so, when someone calls from a mobile phone (that's not on the telstra network) or an IP Phone, emergency services get the billing address.
IMHO - If Skypeout is achieved by making international calls into France, then France can go jump. But if they've got a carrier interface (SS7 gateways and the like) inside the country's borders then they can put up with the same laws that the other Telco's in France (ie. their local competition) do.