Slashdot Mirror
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."
While France has many many funny laws and ideas, many of which I think are bogus. But on this one IMO they are right. If Skype connected directly at the user to a telephone then IMO it would be a different picture. However, SKYPE acts on behalf of the user and hence they are doing the same thing as a telco, albeit not a completely telco.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Especially since Skype out is more expensive than my current voip provider, they have the money for it and interoperate with the POTS.
Tomorrow is another day...
And they are correct. You tie into the Telco, you need to play by the regulations for Telco.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
MS not offering anymore "Skype Out" in France... Who's going to lose? Well, it's the worst kind of solution, in which everybody loses something and nobody wins (not even the French VoIP providers: the greatest majority of Skype-out calls happens just because the called is not online and the caller would like her/him to join a Skype-to-Skype session. A SMS - direct or via Twitter - would achieve pretty much the same thing).
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
OK, they brought us the Minitel. Er, thanks...
I've been here for more than 20 years, and have really enjoyed being financially fucked in the ass by the France Telecom monopoly, swiftly followed by the FT/SFR duopoly, and then Bouygues came along and, tada!, we had the same old...overpriced, underserviced.
Fortunately, after years off battling the well-captured 'regulators', Free has finally got things moving somewhat in the right direction.
My point? Skype buys its out calling service from these fine, regulated companies. It is not a telco in the traditional sense, so leave it alone.
Btw, not a Skype/MS shill, although I freely admit i have found it incredibly useful over the years, and it has saved me and my family a ton of money. Right now moving to Jitsi...it's getting there. (Waiting for Android and iOs clients, please)
"France taxes the crap out of its citizens so we should have seen this coming."
which has nothing to do with this issue.
But hay, just jump on your ignorant bandwagon and toot the crazy horn.
France's person income tax is 0% to 75%..not just 75%. and with Bouclier Fiscal I don't think very many people, if any, pay 75% since it needs to be 1.2million pr more with 2 adults. Not only to the France have a different word for everything, they also have a different tax system.
Perspective:
If you were a family of 2 adults and 3 children making 100,000 Euros you tax rate would be 14%
France taxes, in the real world, are on par, and sometime less then the US taxes..and they have more services.
And of cours,e saying ;'high taxes' is pretty meaningless.
What are the service you get? whats the VALUE overall
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Music therapy.
You both need it to take care of your issue and to learn about gov't regulations introduced now to stop competition and keep prices up, prevent (lower income) people from making income in that field.
But ifÂSB 1437Âpasses, anyone who wants to become a music therapist will face some onerous barriers: an applicant would need a bachelorâ(TM)s degree in music therapy from a program approved by the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA), at least 1,200 hours of clinical training, and 900 hours of internship experience. Practicing or calling oneself a music therapist without a government permission slip would be criminalized, with violators facing up to aÂ$500 fine and/or 30 days imprisonment.
That's what gov't regulations are all about, that and taking ppl for their money. Providing an innovating service ppl like? Ha, we are gov't, it would really be sad if you didn't pay up and something bad happened to your business.
You can't handle the truth.
France can always prevent call termination on France's POTs numbers.
France doesn'r relly have high taxes.
I am defensive for several reasons:
1) the word taxes has become a knee jerk scare word. Being further seperated form services. Meaning peopel talk about cutting taxes, and everyone loves it. A politician saying that the result is loosing servcies, and everyone villifys them.
2) IT's about value.
3) France is the US's first and oldest ally. The US would not exist without France. The general anti-france meme in the US is short sight, unfair, and based in complete ignorance.
Then when people say ignorant shit like "France taxes the crap out of its citizens so we should have seen this coming."
it just general irritates me. It is used to scare people. "You don't want to be like France, there healthcare means that are taxed really high!"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This comment coming from the land of the porkbarrel project is pathetically laughable...
And be replaced by what? The closed-source, proprietary protocol Skype?
Imagine that POTS is shut down and all that is left is a bunch of proprietary VOIP services, none of which interoperate with each other. Yeah, that's really a step forward!
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Seems to me that France should really be embracing open source with open arms -- I bet the only thing holding them back is that so much open source material has already been created by dirty English speakers ;)
The entire French police force is slowly but surely switching to Linux and more generally Open Source software, as are all public schools (although Microsoft did and still does try its usually dirty tricks to prevent that). The entire national assembly (main house of parliament) entirely runs on Linux, from Desktop machines for the députés to servers hosting the live feed/on demand videos. Open Source projects (originating from companies as well as universities and such) regularly obtain grants/funds from official bodies (and in fact, creating an Open Source project is a very favorable point to obtain a lot of those innovation funds). Strong recommendations have been emitted to use only open and standard file formats in all administration, and several projects for laws have been proposed to enforce this, as well as the use of Open Source software in all public administration (not sure any of those were actually passed, though). Skype is also officially forbidden in high-level universities and official research organizations, essentially because it is closed source and thus theoretically prone to potential spying/security issues.
Seems to me that France is *already* embracing Open Source with open arms.
Yet, strangely, people aren't dying in the streets from starvation and lack of tyres in France. If the "socialist minded French way" means a reasonably functional country, with happy people enjoying a decently high standard of living while working 3-hour days, why the f*** would I take advice from someone who lives in a country where typical workers grind through 40-hour workweeks (if they are lucky not to need 80 at minimum wage) and still have sucky lives?
French telecommunication regulator is right to try to impose operator burdends on Skype.
1/ More and more people are adopting this service a primary phone service because of SkypeIn and SkypeOut feature. This means that there will be more and more case where user will need to make emergency calls. This lack of emergency call support is a shame. So the post above is ... very shortsighted. One day you may need it yourseff.
2/ VOIP Technology / Skype are more and more displacing regular phones. They play the same role so they need somehow to be regulated in the same manner. There is in France a declarative licence for small telcos, the so called "L33-1". I know a couple of medium sized company operating VoIP service that applied to this without any problem. So it is not like it is unbearable for companies like Microsoft.
3/ I am so amazed by comment like: Skype should cut skype in/out, or avoid physical presence in France (replace by country xxx if you want) to avoid any form of regulation.
Damn ! these regulations are non discriminatory and made for the common good. Its like on the road, if you have no rules, you end up with a dysfunctional traffic. I see in all these comment some kind of selfish, short sighted spirit, 'I want the lowest cost regardless the consequences" that is a worrying trend.
Just because someone sees the work "governement", "regulation" they jump to the roof, say its bad, andy freedom and they try to avoid it without even pondering the consequences or the actual need for regulation. I see this ultimately as some kind of subtul selfishness.
As much as I agree that freedom and freedom to innovate should be preserved and fostered, it should not be a the cost of forgetting the notion of common good.