Why VoIP Makes Telecom Regulations Irrelevant 341
An anonymous reader writes "BusinessWeek Online analyzes why state and federal regulators' attempts to label VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) a "telecommunications service" is wrong - and threatens to undermine the technology. It quotes Vint Cerf as saying: 'To single out VoIP as a telephone service is a terrible misunderstanding of the Internet industry. I would submit that, someday, the phrase Internet telephony will sound as archaic as 'horseless carriage' sounds today.'" We've also recently discussed Vonage's attempts to fight telecom regulation in Minnesota.
Anyone else sick of (Score:5, Interesting)
Get with the times, or get out of the way.
10-10-$NUM (Score:5, Interesting)
As I understand it all those "10-10-$NUM" services you see advertised on the television all use VoIP. My 5 cent (CA$) long distance (to
Different technology /= not a telephone (Score:5, Interesting)
If Vonage et. all. succeed, it should be on the basis of providing a better product for less money, not by finding and exploiting loopholes in the regulations that are desinged to protect consumers.
What else would you expect? (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, the phone companies tried to get modems banned. Or, at the very least, get legislation to charge separate access fees for those users because they knew nobody would pay such high prices for ISDN when they could make local calls ($.05, untimed in my area) and get reasonable (although slower) speed.
Now they're in the same boat. With the advent of technology that allows similar operation as the phone, but over the internet, they're scrambling to find ways to bring it under *their* control. I'm assuming that at this point, you don't need to be told why.
I'd expect this to go the same way I expect the Hydrogen Fuel Cell car to go in America with "Big Oil" resisting it... slow the adoption of the technology until a very large interest in it can be secured by the large corporations affected.
And *we*, the people, allow it to happen... write your congress person and tell them "hell no!"
Carriers AREN'T carrying calls over the 'net (Score:5, Interesting)
Neither MCI or any other carrier is routing their calls via "the Internet". They're carrying them on internal networks over TCP/IP. That they share a common set of protocol and hardware infrastructure doesn't make them "Internet".
Indeed the closest this sort of inane statement could get to being correct is that some carriers might be routing some of their telephony and traditional data services over the same connections using the same hardware; hardly news and not at all what the article implies.
DSL / Combo packages (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I'm not sure I understand why... (Score:3, Interesting)
If we communicated by way of dictating to people who tapped out messages in Morse Code... well that's a ton of overhead. It would be expensive. It would also be replaced by better and more convenient technology. As a matter of act, it already has! Meet the telephone!
My father is a typesetter, or was. Don't know what one is? Not surprising if you don't, because the job more or less doesn't exist anymore, thanks to the availibility and ease of use of computers and printers. Sticking letters on a printing press and designing graphics using proprietary business software has been supplanted by Photoshop and color printers.
The telephone as we know it is in danger of being replaced by newer technology. Welcome to progress. Check yer bags at the door.
Vonage user in Minnesota... (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the reasons I got the VOIP service was the fact that I'm sick of being scr*w*d with by local phone companies. It's also cheaper, and the sound quality is better. (And hey - I'm a geek.)
I just recently moved. I had a cable modem installed in my new house before I cut off my broadband service at my old house. I unplugged the little Cisco box that my Vonage phone service runs out of and took it to my new house and plugged it in. I ran the phone cable that comes out of it into the nearest wall jack... et voila! My home phone service for my entire house just moved from one house to the next in 20 minutes with no hassles.
The last time I moved I was using Qwest. Instead of transferring my phone number from one home to the next in adjoining towns in the Minneapolis suburbs, they transferred my phone number to a town in Iowa and told me that there was no way that they could move it back in less than three days.
Anything that threatens to impede the growth of regular phone alternatives must be stopped. The traditional phone companies deserve to die a slow death if they can't get their heads around the idea of "customer service" instead of "self serving."
Emergency Services (Score:3, Interesting)
It's all about wiretapping (Score:5, Interesting)
The one reason that the government wants to treat VOIP as a telecom service is wiretapping.
CALEA [askcalea.net] requires access to telecom services, for just that purpose.
VoIP has a long road ahead of it... (Score:4, Interesting)
Traditional phone service costs me $20/mo for unlimited local calls -- and I can get a line for as low as $13/mo with restrictions on outgoing calls. So the VoIP product is more expensive and less reliable -- features are great, but for myself and many others, reliability and price are probably the two biggest considerations when choosing a phone service.
And this is before states impose phone taxes (yeah I know, it makes no sense from a geek standpoint -- but the fact is phone taxes as currently written don't make any sense anyway, and it's a revenue stream that legislators are going to ensure remains available). The only way I can see this business model making sense is if Vonage is going after the bad-credit crowd -- folks who've already had their phone service shut off and are willing to spend more money on a company in exchange for the benefit of the doubt. There are other companies that do this, too. Maybe you can make money charging high rates to a clientele that's likely to default on their obligations; I don't know. But it doesn't seem like the way to popularize the technology.
Re:I'm not sure I understand why... (Score:3, Interesting)
Differential taxation based on use of a single infrastructure is nothing new. Semi-truck drivers pay road taxes that automobile drivers don't, for instance.
-Isaac
VoIP is a godsend (Score:4, Interesting)
Kapitalizm Rulez (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you want reliable telephone service? Even if there is a power failure?
Do you want guaranteed availability of telephone service at uniform and reasonable rates, even if you live on a farm or in a slum?
Do you want 911 service that works?
Besides loss of tax revenues and control, there is a good reason for regulatory agencies to be concerned about VOIP. What if VOIP severely damages the market for conventional telephone service? That could result in the loss of universal and reliable, even if somewhat overpriced, telephone service in this country.
Re:because they're just data (Score:5, Interesting)
I know the principle of taxation has spread to the point that every time money changes hands, the government gets some of it, but it's wrong.
Terribly off-topic, but ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Apart from being a really cool geek he is also a really cool geek to me.
Sorry for the interruption, mod me down now please.
Reasons I feel voip is not sliced bread (Score:4, Interesting)
1. With the recent worm activity, it just showed how much The net is vurnable to attack. I don't know about you But I want to be able to call people when my net connection is down.
2. Voip is traveling over a unsecure network. Meaning that the voip gateways can be spoofed, dos'ed, hacked, etc.
3. Voip is better equiped for use in private networks (meaning your home or small bussiness)
4. Bandwidth isn't set aside for voip session. Blurp's being hungup by a 'dos happy 13 year' (yah yah sure we will have ipv6 but its still on a unsecure network.)
Reasons why voip is cool.
1. Its not set on a single route.
2. Its fun to play with for a quick chat with a friend over the internet.
All and all voip is pretty cool But I don't want to see it intergrated into the public phone system. If the phone company's want to implement a decentrillised system then they need to colaborate together. To make a system which isn't prone to attacks.. what it comes down to is what QOS (quailtiy of service) that a new system can provide.. voip isn't going to provide a high enough qos for me. (there are reasons why the phone system has huge battery banks.)
Re:Carriers AREN'T carrying calls over the 'net (Score:2, Interesting)
Some of them are. I was at a presentation at Spring VON (Voice On the Net) conference where an international telephony company described exactly how they do indeed use the public Internet for routing their VoIP traffic.
Of course, this is not to say that MCI is doing this. But it certainly isn't true that no one is doing it.
And on a complete tangent, it is rather ironic that this story was posted while I was (and still am) on a conference call with an FBI representative dealing with CALEA issues related to VoIP. It's worth remembering that while most of us don't like regulation, the fact is that telcos are required to provide certain features (such as 911, E911 and wiretap support) for which it is not at all obvious whether they apply to VoIP. I for one am grateful that some of those regulations are in place, and would be somewhat concerned to be in an all-VoIP world where I could dial 911 and not be guaranteed that the service provider would do its darndest to route that call to the local emergency dispatcher.
But I digress....
Re:because they're just data (Score:2, Interesting)
It seems to me that there's a fundamental difference of opinion in the purpose of taxation. Some people think that taxation is designed to keep government running, so government should continue to seek out new sources of revenue as old ones dry up.
Other people seem to feel that the purpose of taxation is to ensure that required services can be paid for. Sometimes these required services are for protection of residents (911, interstates, etc), sometimes they are to encourage commerce.
What value does the government bring to VoIP? If you can't point to any value that the government brings to this technology, then (it seems to me) that you have to admit that they're just trying to recover lost revenue.
Re:I'm not sure I understand why... (Score:3, Interesting)
I beg to differ. I most certainly DO pay taxes on my DSL line (including the universal service fee). And since my DSL service comes from Speakeasy (via Covad) and my main line comes from Verizon, I'm paying these taxes twice for the same piece of wire.
Re:Regulation Kills (Score:3, Interesting)
Give me a break. Regulation did all right with the phone companies for a long time. The phone service here (in the US) is excellent and reasonably priced. It may not be extremely innovative, but that's not why we regulate things. We regulate things we want to be dependable and universal. That's why we should do for broadband what we did for phones. Broadband service has the same problems as telephone service and electric service: it is costly to go the last mile, and this discourages competition. So it needs to be regulated and taxed, just like phone and electric service. We can regulate and tax it to be universal, dependable, and reasonably cheap, just as we did for phones. Then we can have unregulated VoIP or whatever other services running on top of it, provided by unregulated companies in a free market.
Re:Different technology /= not a telephone (Score:5, Interesting)
So in your opinion I actually do owe someone a stamp for every email I send?
Why? I've already payed for the bandwidth.
You see, the particular infrastructure for delivering "content" is very, very relevant to how it is payed for. It is the infrastructure that is taxed, not the "service."
Traditional telephony has an infrastructure tightly controled by the few. With the internet the infrastructure, and cost/ownership thereof, is distributed amongst the users themselves.
I actually just terminated my phone service because I got tired of paying more in taxes than I was for the actual service. You want to talk to me? Fine. Email me. IM me. Meet me in my private IRC channel. Roger Wilco me.
I don't use the phone system at all now. A packet is a packet and I already pay relevant taxes and fees for my cable internet use. It's nobody's business what my packets decode into.
Telephony is dead. It just won't stop breathing.
KFG
Re:Kapitalizm Rulez (Score:2, Interesting)
"
Actually, you can't. You might think so, but you should read the disclaimer on Vonage's website. They make a point of noting that they do not connect you to the 911 Emergency dispatcher. What they do, in fact, is use your registered billing address to route your call to the local police department. So instead of getting a trained 911 dispatcher with twelve pots of coffee to stay awake for those late shifts, in the middle of the night you'll get some bored, half-asleep police sergeant who drew the short straw this week.
Don't get me wrong, I use Vonage for my home "land-line", but if I ever have an emergency I plan to reach for my cell phone instead.
Re:It's all about wiretapping (Score:3, Interesting)
The stupid thing is that VOIP is essentially nothing but another addressing system for "voice chats". I can use iChat or AIM with sound, and it's just like VOIP except that the addressing is done by AOL instead of a telecom. In the end, they'll have regulations set up on technologies that the criminals they want to catch can get around easy.
Shouldn't the consumer opt for reliability? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you're underestimating the consumer. I personally have decided *NOT* to choose VOIP over Verizon's $50/Umlimited plan, because I personally value the reliability of the copper network.
Many people, including my brother, feel otherwise which is why they opted to not to invest the local phone network, but rather their alternative broadband network (cable modem, wireless, etc.)
IMO, I think this type of competition is healthy for the Telco's and is forcing them to provide a better product. Even my mother understands that reliability is an important factor when deciding to replace your ILEC with VOIP, and despite the constant sales pitches from my brother, she still opted to stick with Verizon.
Don't underestimate the consumer.
(Not that we ALL haven't dealt with idiot customers)
Re:10-10-$NUM (Score:3, Interesting)
Naturally, the actual telcos don't like losing their highest profit percentage traffic, even if the other guys are doing it by the exact method they are.
Re:Kapitalizm Rulez (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you want guaranteed availability of telephone service at uniform and reasonable rates, even if you live on a farm or in a slum?
Actually no. Smart regulation reflects the varying costs of delivering a service to those getting it. Needing a lot of expensive infrastructure built to service a small number of people or very high fraud costs *should* increase purchase costs. Cross-subsidizing them to make a phone $25/month, everywhere, is idiotic. I'd have a T1 to my office (urban areas, lots of facilities), but its $500. Not because it costs $500 to deliver it, but because many of those costs help subsidize other more expensive POTS deliveries elsewhere.
The semi-scary VOIP thing is that instead of smartly regulating it like we should, we'll instead just slap the old regulations onto VOIP.
Taxes, Taxes, and more Taxes (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Income Tax
2) SSI Tax
3) State Tax (some states)
4) Insurance Deduction (taxed through the Insurance Provider, cost passed on to me)
5) Universal Service Fee
6) Line Access Surcharge (taxed and passed on)
7) Federal Tax
8) Long Distance Access Charge (also taxed and passed on)
9) ???
10) MASSIVE PROFIT!!!
Seems rather excessive that I am taxed at least three times on every dollar I make and spend!
Just my $.02 (after taxes from $1.00)
Re:Anyone else sick of (Score:2, Interesting)
- bypassed the long distance lines that Bell
...
To be accurate, RBOCs are prohibited by law from crossing a LATA boundry without handing the traffic to a long distance provider. Recently, RBOCs have been entering the LD market (usually by acquiring smaller LD providers) making that a little bit of a grey area. Case in point... look at BellSouth.Net; they own and operate all the dial hardware but cannot interconnect them all without using an outside network (UUNet mostly.) I laugh at that all the time.There are a lot of "taxes" and "fees" on phone bills these days. They really piss me off. Just call it what it is: the f***in' service cost. All those BS "FCC" charges are money put directly in the telcos' pockets. Not one damned penny leaves the telco for the FCC.
Government regulation is the only way they've made it this far. Cable TV networks have had the technical capability to provide voice and network access for decades. However, they've never, historically, been allowed to do so.
VoIP is a Good Thing(tm), but there's a lot of other things that have to occur before it will work as well as the century old PSTN. (Never tried VoIP calls across the country/planet or when people are downloading their pr0n have you.)
What I would hate to see. (Score:4, Interesting)
For a small business, or as a second line, something like Vonage is great. This needs to be fostered, not taxed, for the time being. Right now, I wouldn't be willing to pay a tax on Vonage because I don't get plain old telephone-style reliability guarantees - that's what you trade off for the bargain. Of course, the real problem is the reliability of the internet infrastructure and last mile broadband connections, which generally are just terrible (especially with DSL, which I finally just dumped in favor of cable). You just can't get reliable service over an unreliable medium.
I'm willing to pay all these taxes, if and only if I get real reliability and uptime guarantees (for less than 200 dollars a month, which is what these fucking thieves want to charge you for business DSL service).
Re:Vint Cerf does it again (Score:3, Interesting)
If you're gonna start handing out phone numbers and connecting to the telephone network, you better be ready to comply with the same rules all the other phone companies play by.
They're All Wrong (Score:3, Interesting)