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Will FCC Regulate Internet Phone Calls? 261

Posted by timothy from the unctuous-rulemakers dept.
Ridgelift writes "The FCC will begin hearings on Monday December 1st to see if they will get involved in regulating calls placed over the internet. Since a federal court in Minnesota ruled a month ago that calls delivered over the Internet are not subject to state regulation, Qwest, Verizon and SBC have all announced their intention to deliver more calls over their data networks. "The stakes in the debate are huge. Federal and state governments could lose billions of dollars in revenue from regulatory fees if calls moved onto the Internet are no longer subject to the charges.""
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Will FCC Regulate Internet Phone Calls? More

Will FCC Regulate Internet Phone Calls?

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  • What will they do? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ryanr ( 30917 ) * <ryan@thievco.com> on Sunday November 30, 2003 @07:48PM (#7595210) Homepage Journal
    Well, let's see... the Federal Government is in charge of deciding whether to regulate it... and the Federal Government stands to lose billions in revenue if they don't regulate it...

    Well, I'm sure they will do the right thing.

    • Re:What will they do? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      God Bless Taxes!

      I know I should be mad, but Im only focusing on the fact that data isnt taxed (should it be?) then why should Internet Telephany be taxed?

    • Re:What will they do? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by silentbozo ( 542534 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @07:58PM (#7595263) Journal
      This is an area where the big telephone companies stand to gain, one way or another. Right now, Qwest and other Baby Bells are pushing to go to VOIP, not because they want to, but because if they don't they're going to get their lunch eaten (much as they were forced to offer DSL to try and kill off their competition.) After all, by offering VOIP, they're cannabalizing local phone service, on which they make TONS of money.

      So why the big push? Well, if the Feds do nothing, they'll need to have a foot in this new market to compete, AND they can save all that money in connection costs for long distance. If the Feds regulate, then the Baby Bells are no worse off than they are now, but all the new VOIP startups get hobbled, big time.

      Several commentators have basically noted that the established teleco's are playing chicken with the Feds - either regulate and put us back on top of the game, or else we'll take all our local service (and your freebie tax revenues) and put it in this new area.

      • Re:What will they do? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by buffer-overflowed ( 588867 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @08:26PM (#7595406) Journal
        Umm, long distance is way cheaper than local from a distance versus distance standpoint. Access minutes are basically to suplement the increased costs of providing and maintaining the local loop So pushing traffic off the long-distance networks and onto the local networks (through pushing VOIP and DSL) will cause the ILECs to charge more (we've already gradually seen this happen, as local phone service increases in cost, while long distance decreases in cost [over say, a decade ago]). The ILECs are in a unique position to capitalize on this, but it's not going to get over the problem of the local loop. Some people say wireless will, but I doubt that.

    • Re:What will they do? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Zocalo ( 252965 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @08:13PM (#7595346) Homepage
      I'd have to agree about the "what". That governments are going to try and "regulate" (AKA "tax") IP telephony is pretty much a forgone conclusion I think. What is more interesting to me is the question "how will they do it?"; do you tax the customer, the telco, or both?

      Taxing some telco that decides to shunt calls over its private data network, or even the Internet, is one thing, but how do you begin with taxing a IP telephony call made directly between two PCs? What if only one PC is in the US, and will it matter which one initiated the call? How do you even *start* with something like Skype?

      You could try to tax the telco and not the individual, but that is surely going to lead to a plethora of loopholes and tax dodges as the telcos shift costs onto their customers. You could try a flat rate "Internet tax", but that's going to create a firestorm in the voting classes, never a good idea if you care about re-election.

      Well, I'm sure they will not do the right thing.

      • One practical problem ... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by jc42 ( 318812 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @10:24PM (#7595961) Homepage Journal
        VoIP is just a TCP connection, right? So in general is it even feasible to regulate (i.e., tax) VoIP separately?

        If so, this brings up the interesting question of regulating other kinds of TCP traffic. Given things like VPN and SSH, it can be exceedingly difficult to even discover what sort of traffic is carried on a TCP connection. If my employer requires that I set up a VPN link to work, and I happen to have a phone plugged into my computer that uses the VPN to make work calls, how do the regulators measure my use of VoIP. It's just some portion of those encrypted packets going over the VPN connection, but that packets also include my vi sessions, rsyncs, ftps, and all the other things that I do as part of my job. Does this proposal mean that I'll be paying voice-line rates for my all-day VPN connection to work?

        You might think that a wireless VoIP phone would be an exception that's easy to regulate. But my current cellphone is also a Palm Pilot, and I can and do use it for web access. Currently, voice and http on this phone use different low-level protocols, so they can measure them separately. But with VoIP, the voice and http connections are just TCP. I also work with databases, and much of that work is voice-like in that it has bursts of data alternating in both directions. Will this have the characteristics of VoIP, and thus be regulated/taxed as phone usage?

        One possibility is that we'll suddenly find that all TCP connections are considered "voice" and charged extra. But we can probably all imagine the outrage this would produce - especially from people running commercial web sites.

        Anyway, it'd be interesting to hear how they're going to sort out the voice sessions from the data sessions, when they're all just TCP connections.

      • I'm in favour of *not* regulating VOIP, but as a middle ground why not at least give a certain number of years before implementing regulations or taxes?

        Anyway, right now long distance over IP is not much cheaper than using are regular phone line. Adding more burden might kill VOIP.

    • Re:What will they do? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Thing 1 ( 178996 )

      Well, I'm sure they will do the right thing.

      What blows me away is the Federal Government uses words like "revenue" when describing the taxes that they take from us, using the threat of a barrel of a gun to make sure we pay.

      That's most emphatically not "revenue", which is money earned in exchange for goods and/or services entered into willingly by both parties.

      If we've found a more efficient way of doing things, most especially because the older, less-efficient way of doing things was less efficien

      • Hmm, obsolete revenue model, misguided legislation to keep some sort of guaranteed revenue against a new and better technology, what does that remind me of...

        *cough*RIAA*cough*MPAA...

        Excuse me, I'm feeling a bit under the weather...
      • You're here willingly. You can remove yourself from taxation by leaving. Unlike un-free countries, Americans are free to leave the country without special permission.

        Since you're here, you are consenting to live by the laws of the land.

        If you want to go to a place that doesn't have such opressive taxation, there are places in Pakistan where no tax-man has set foot in 50 years. It's a veritable Libertarian paradise!

        • You're here willingly. You can remove yourself from taxation by leaving. Unlike un-free countries, Americans are free to leave the country without special permission.

          some of us would prefer to change things where we are instead of picking up and moving every time the local government does something stupid (which is all the time, really)

    • ...that the internet is untouchable on taxation--that was the feelgood assumption on the part of American. THis assumption was created by politicians and the media and was fueled by dotcom dollars. It was part of the dotcom propaganda machine. So taxing the internet now is going to be hard for the politicians to do.
  • If there is something they can tax, they will..

    Just a matter of when, and how much.. not IF..

    • Sadly, (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Hal The Computer ( 674045 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @08:15PM (#7595361)
      Nothing is black or white. If there is something they can tax, they will.., as long as they don't get their heads handed to them. Many U.S. states have no sales tax whatsoever. That dosen't fit your nice little theory. Certainly not all consumer goods are taxed. Every road you drive on isn't a toll road.
      If you haven't fallen asleep yet, you might want to read an article on taxation [wikipedia.org]. Accuracy not guarenteed, but hey, it's free and it's mostly accurate.

      • Re:Sadly, (Score:5, Informative)

        by orthancstone ( 665890 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @08:43PM (#7595471)
        Only 5 states are without a sales tax rate. Yeah, that may be 10 percent but that still isn't many.

      • They will, they will... (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        The original poster very clearly said "they will", not "they do".

        Many U.S. states have no sales tax whatsoever

        Wrong. Not "many". Very few. Six or less, I believe. And I'm not aware of anything that prevents the state from imposing one in the near or distant future, or the federal government from imposing a federal sales tax. Name a state that has removed a sales tax. Okay, now name the states that have added them over the years. It's pretty clear what they will do, given a little time.

        Every roa

    • Re:Goverment Wont Loose Tax Dollars (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @09:05PM (#7595587) Homepage
      Impossible for them to completely tax or control.

      Well for a COMPANY trying to sell a service out of VoIP? yeah they can. but the biggest users are the private telcos like me. I have about 10 people on my private VoIP telco right now. I'll be adding another 4 this christmas when they recieve their Creative VoIP blaster alike clones I get from south america and a preconfigured cd with fobbit-phone on it ready for the lumpy's family and friends network.

      we save hundreds of dollars a year in long distance, rarely have outages, and only uncle Phil in colorado that has Dial-up has crappy sound quality. Even my travelling Muse Brother uses his in europe from his laptop or internet cafe's.

      they cant tax or control me as I use a non-standard protocol and port's. Plus I know of many MANY more people doing the same with other voip hardware. (Note to nay-sayers.. I get direct dial quality and only have latency problems during heavy internet outages... it sounds as good as your overpriced Cisco Voip stuff)

      voip is as uncontrollable as http traffic. Even ISP's that claim they block personal webservers can't block a determined users from putting one up.

  • FCC Trends (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Metallic Matty ( 579124 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @07:51PM (#7595227)
    I would go out on a limb to say that the FCC would continue to try and not dabble in the internet's affairs.

    Besides which, this medium should be free from government regulation, revenue loss or not.
    • The FCC won't let me be / try to shut down my VOIP

      Thank you, thank you. I now owe the music industry millions of dollars.

    • Re:FCC Trends (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kjs-esq ( 233362 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @08:16PM (#7595370)
      I am inclined to agree with you that the FCC will decide to regulate it simply to insure that the individual states do not. If VoIP is considered a telecommunications service, it is subject to regulation by the individual state public utility commissions (PUCs). If, instead, the FCC reaffirms that it should be considered an informational service, it will remain as something the FCC will not dabble in and that the PUCs are expressly forbidden from dabbling in.

      This is one of those rare occasions where the decision by the FCC to get involved may actually be a good thing, because 50 sets of rules, with 50 sets of franchise fees, 50 PUCs providing oversight and 50 sets of state legislatures (or worse yet, individual municipalities like cable regulation) using the fees in place of tax increases would do *wonders* to innovation. Just look at the Minn. decision and the conniption they had about the number portability and the issue of customers from out of state having Minn. area codes. How long do you think number portability would last if each state tried to tax out-of-state users based upon in-state area codes?

      An express preemption by the FCC is the best chance VoIP has of surviving and thriving outside the grip of the incumbent telecommunication giants...

      Disclaimer: While I may be an attorney, this does not qualify as legal advice. I mean, what type of dope would you have to be to take legal advice off the Internet?

  • Detecting internet phone calls (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Karamchand ( 607798 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @07:55PM (#7595244)
    How could one possibly even detect phone calls? It's not as simple as in the "old, analog" world where it's like there's a phone line, that means there're phone calls.
    An internet connection is used for many other tasks (be it web browsing or email or whatever) and one can certainly encrypt and/or hide phone calls so they aren't "visible" as phone calls anymore but just look like usual internet traffic.

    • Re:Detecting internet phone calls (Score:5, Informative)

      by nodwick ( 716348 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @08:08PM (#7595327)
      How could one possibly even detect phone calls?
      They're not talking about PC-to-PC voip calls a la Skype, they're talking about regular phone calls carried over voip such as Vonage. The Detroit News [detnews.com] has a good layman's summary of the regulation involved now. The highlight:
      Vonage typically pays the Bells or Bell rivals sharply reduced fees to carry data traffic at the other end of a call. Some of its calls are handed to long-distance companies, which pay traditional access fees. Similarly, AT&T has started carrying some long-distance calls over Internetlike VOIP networks and paying cut-rate fees to connect at the other end. In this case, the customer has no idea VOIP is involved.
      Although this approach lets them dodge many of the regulatory fees due to the internet being untaxed at the moment, they still have to hook into POTS for the local loop. If legislation goes through on taxing voip calls, it'll be relatively easy to meter the incoming calls at the POTS interface and tax accordingly.

      That still leaves open the possibility of pure voip to voip calls being undetectable (e.g. between different Vonage customers), but in the near term those sorts of calls are likely to still be in the minority.

      • That still leaves open the possibility of pure voip to voip calls being undetectable (e.g. between different Vonage customers), but in the near term those sorts of calls are likely to still be in the minority.

        I'd wonder about that. A news story that has been covered here is that, over the past couple years, the wireless phone system in Japan has gone almost entirely VoIP. It's cheaper, works better, and you can call anywhere in the world for the same price as a local call. If you have a fancy combined p
    • They don't need to tax the phone call per se. My guess is that they would regulate it at the ISP level -- a tax on consumer internet service that goes to pay for universal service, shared infrastructure, do-not-spam lists, etc. Another option is a per megabyte transfer tax is would be considered "more fair" for lower-income, less active internet users. Of course congress might (or might not) object to such an internet tax.

      Personally I think taxes suck and hate that I currently shell out $30 a month in
      • They don't need to tax the phone call per se.

        That's completely different from what is being proposed now. Taxing phone calls "per se" is exactly what they're considering.

        If they must tax the internet, then a percentage tax taken from the bill collected by the ISP would be a much better idea. That, at least, would be fair and wouldn't discriminate amoung one internet protocol or another. I don't want to see (for example) people prefering NetMeeting over VoIP or AIM over email just because one of them

    • Re:Detecting internet phone calls (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jason Pollock ( 45537 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @08:37PM (#7595450) Homepage

      If you want to talk to anyone other than your immediate friends, you will need to go through a directory service, and possibly some gateways. Once it crosses a network, it can be detected.

      Even better, there are a lot of police-driven requirements, such as call identification, tracing and intercept. Those WILL NOT be going away during the transition to VoIP. At the end of the day, if the government can't find any other way to do it, they'll force ISPs to put in VoIP proxies and regulate all of the VoIP carriers to route through them. Instant detection and billing. Heck, I wrote one for my last employer!

      ISPs already implement charging by destination (mine does) and HTTP port proxies. It isn't hard to go from there to per-port billing.

      Even better, SIP (unlike) H.323 tends to play nicer with proxies...

      Someone also mentioned routing through Canada. I seem to remember that a US carrier is already in trouble for doing just that, so I think that people will be on the lookout for that one. :)

      Regards,
      Jason Pollock

      On the flip side, has anyone considered what VoIP telemarketing spam would be like? Would the "do not call" list still apply? It would be very interesting to see a spammer initiate several thousand calls and only handle the ones that answer... No longer limited by the number of outgoing trunks...

  • Google News Partner Link (Score:4, Informative)

    by NOT-2-QUICK ( 114909 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @07:55PM (#7595248) Homepage
    No registration required... [google.com]

  • Enforcement? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dyolf Knip ( 165446 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @07:56PM (#7595253) Homepage
    And just how would they enforce any such regulation? VoIP is basically just a program running over existing networks. Cell phones not withstanding, you can no more require charges to be paid than you could charge for email or instant messaging. It's just a communications protocol!

  • Completely Switching to VoIP (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Davak ( 526912 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @07:58PM (#7595261) Homepage

    Thanks to some great suggestions by people previously on slashdot I have completely switched to VoIP for my phone service. It rocks.

    Previously I had not switched because I was scared of losing 911 service. However, if you have wire running into your house, you can still pick up and dial 911--even without service!

    So we have our emergency land-line phone--for free. Now we are using VoIP for everything else.

    However, if VoIP starts getting taxes to death, then people like me will switch to something else... and then something else...

    Can't the government just stay off these new industries long enough for them to get started?
    • Agreed...I helped a company go to VoIP to save about $6,000 in office to office long distance (the other option was to switch to cell phones on each desk which also would have saved a ton. We decided on VoIP AND Blackberry service).

      They are currently looking 10 years down the line and the possibility of moving all of our data needs to wireless mesh networks (if they are prevalent by that time) or buying our own satelite ($5 million est. by then) since the company will be multinational at that point.

    • However, if you have wire running into your house, you can still pick up and dial 911--even without service!

      So we have our emergency land-line phone--for free. Now we are using VoIP for everything else.

      So the local telco has to provide a 911 service for you, but cannot collect any revenue from you to pay for it.

      Sure, they are not notice one person doing this, but what happens when half the population switched to VOIP? Telco goes bust, and no-one gets a 911 service, government has to step in and either p

      • If the government would pull many of the burdens they placed on the telco's, then the telco's could provide resonable priced basic service.

        If I pulled off all the govenment add-on fees off my bill, and the hidden ones that show up as part of the monthly basic fee (passed on costs), my bill could be about 1/3 the current price.

        The telco's are trying to shed these fees as other services can now easly compete with the burdened landline providers. The high cost of a landline is one of the reasons many people
    • Can't the government just stay off these new industries long enough for them to get started?

      Ummm ... the US government supported the Internet (mostly as Arpanet) for two decades before the commercial world finally noticed it. All that time, the code and other technology was all available openly. The commercial guys could have grabbed it and set up a separate commercial network at any time, the same way the DoD set up a separate military network. This never happened. The way that the Internet went comm

  • Internet as a Utility? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dmurawsky ( 255433 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @07:58PM (#7595267) Homepage Journal
    Well, as telephones started becoming more and more a part of daily life, the systems that they ran on became taxed by the government. I see no reason why the government won't do the same with the Internet. Let's just hope that they do it intelligently (wishful thinking, I know).
    • What would be interesting is if individuals and organizations, increasingly frustrated by the commercialization of the Internet decided to set up their own network of networks, running over perhaps point to point wired, optic links, wireless, or something else VPN-like. They used to do something like this in the old days, what was it called, UUCP [wikipedia.org]?

  • How? (Score:5, Informative)

    by pdaoust007 ( 258232 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @07:58PM (#7595271)
    This is all nice and all but how the hell are they going to regulate this exactly? Sure it might be easy to target companies like Vonage but what do you do with all the free services out there like Skype [skype.com] or Free World Dialup [fwdnet.net]?

  • so what? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by __aaitqo8496 ( 231556 )
    "Federal and state governments could lose billions of dollars in revenue..." ...of which could made up if we spent an ounce less on military funding.

  • A question.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by KD7JZ ( 161218 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @08:09PM (#7595329)
    Do you consider universal affordable phone service to be a social good worth paying for?

    That goal of universal phone service is possible only because of the current system of regulation. Regulation is an unfortunate term. It is really a system whereby telephone subscribers in populus areas subsidize subcribers in more rural areas. Regulation allows phone providers a consistent rate of return on their capital investment while keeping rates down for everyone.

    • Re:A question.. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by shostiru ( 708862 )
      I consider emergency service a social good worth paying for, and I will gladly do so via actual taxes. I even consider basic phone service a social good, just as I consider basic water service, fuel, and electricity a social good, but I see no particular reason why the government should enforce subsidization of one and not the others via subscribers' bills. If a community, state, or the country wishes to subsidize any or all of them so be it, I'll vote for that (tho I have no expectation others will do th
    • First off, what they're talking about is whether to regulate companies which provide access to the telephone network via IP as telephone companies. Chances are that they will, since it's no less a use of the phone network if the call starts halfway there.

      On the other hand, people in populous areas (with good network connectivity) may start making more pure VoIP calls and not using the phone network as much. This would lead to the phone network getting out of balance. On the other hand, at that point the go

    • Regulation allows phone providers a consistent rate of return on their capital investment while keeping rates down for everyone.

      "Consistent rate of return" just means the provider is not allowed to charge more when the cost of providing the service costs more. If providing telephone or internet service in the rural boonies costs more than in the city, why SHOULDN'T the people living in the boonies pay more for their service? The more they have to pay, the more likely that competitive services (like wirel
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • What stops them from "regulating" online conferencing, telephony (such as Skype), etc? That seems practically impossible unless the government starts monitoring the internet. Is it only going to involve telephones? What, really, seperates a telephone system (a traditional one) and a computer w/ a microphone?

    Oh, but of course, the government doesn't understand it's own creation-- the internet. I think we've all seen that enough already...

  • Are they allowed to read my mail? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by t0qer ( 230538 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @08:12PM (#7595340) Homepage Journal
    I don't know the specifics of the law, but from what I know about the FCC it was founded to regulate wide area transmissions right? Anything to do with radio that passes over public land.

    Most of the internet now is not publically owned. AOL/Time Warner has some of the nicest backbones in existance (I don't think I need to remind avid /. readers of how many times we gave those servers beatings for matrix and LOTR trailers) Either they use magic, or their network has more bandwidth than a bittorrent.

    Which causes me to say, what gives the goverment the right to go after a company like AOL if they started providing phone services to it's subscription base. As long as AOL allowed other IP telephony providers to route calls into their networks, which was the community based resource sharing it's creators invisioned, then in essence it is a wide area transmission. If a node goes out, it reroutes.

    It's a paradox. We can't have our cake and eat it too and unfortunately for most of John Q Public in the US, the goverment wants to be able to have evidence collecting power. We want privacy and we want a goverment that can defend us from scumbag corporations at the same time.

    I think the FCC is a lone tomato rotting in the sun, skin blistering with flys buzzing about it, who's smell of decomposition just barely singes your nose. Regulation did not bring the consumer choice, which is why when deregulation came about the choice in phone service providers skyrocketed.

    It's proof that less goverment involvement in phone providers results in better consumer choice. I for one am totally for letting any company do this.

    This news is sort of old hat though, since many companies i've worked for over the years had IP based telephony for connecting calls between offices. I know a lot of the insanely big (like AOL/Time warner) have to use IP traffic for their voice data. Cisco does for sure.

  • Live Streams... (Score:3, Informative)

    by deathinc ( 211433 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @08:13PM (#7595343)
    There apparently will be several [fcc.gov] live feeds [c-span.org] available of the hearing tomorrow for those away from their TVs.

  • What do current taxes do? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by stienman ( 51024 ) <.adavis. .at. .ubasics.com.> on Sunday November 30, 2003 @08:18PM (#7595376) Homepage Journal
    IIRC, phone taxes historically were created two support the poor (as phones were eventually determined to be a basic service that should be available to all) and later to support the 911 emergency location service.

    I would be willing to support the frugal application of these two taxes to internet phone usage, except a little more broadly: 911 service given to anyone with an internet connection, and additional phone taxes to cover the cost of providing basic internet connections to the poor.

    There may be additional taxes required to regulate the industry (support the FCC a tiny bit, etc) so companies don't completely fleece consumers.

    But in the end, the reality is that phone service is so cheap, and internet service so cheap, that to complain about an additional $1/month or less in taxes is being petty.

    What? It's $7.00 per month? Well then, fight to the death for your $82/year!

    Of course the real issue is that the internet allows anyone to become a phone company overnight, even offshore, so collecting such taxes is going to be practically impossible. Best to go to the local ISPs, turn them into basic phone service providers put a small tax on the internet (flat rate per line/connection regardless of usage or bandwidth) and get rid of the concept of a 'phone company' or 'cable company'. You have connection providers and content providers. Levy the 911 and subsistance tax on the connection. Cellular providers will simply become ISPs, each cell phone a computer, the 'line' between counting as one internet connection. Each person will typically have 2-5 lines (cell, office, home, etc) Since content providers must have a connection, then they too will be taxed. Anyone can become a content provider.

    3) Profit!

    -Adam
    • to complain about an additional $1/month or less in taxes is being petty.
      Studied American History lately? We WERE a bunch of petty bastards who bitched about taxes all the time right before our separation from Great Britain.

  • What I want to know (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Sunday November 30, 2003 @08:19PM (#7595379) Homepage
    How will they track this, and how will they be able to determine if people are cheating?

    OK, so they decide to regulate and tax Voice routed over IP. What about Voice routed over IP routed over some other sort of IP protocol disguised to not look like voice? What about Voice over IP routed through relays in Canada? What if two people are doing VoIP but then claiming "what, this isn't a phone conversation, we're just streaming each others talk radio streaming mp3 stations to each other."

    This could become fascinating. We would wind up with this sort of caste structure being created among internet protocols, where this stream of bytes is okay and anonymous but THIS stream of bytes, the government needs to know about it and it needs to be taxed.. just because the latter set of bytes happens to contain audio data of a certain sort. So far the internet has avoided anything of that sort; certain classes of *content* have been differentiated from one another in a regulatory fashion, but never before a class of *data*.

    Soon we may wind up with something where the proverbial "Joe Sixpack" pays relatively high fees on his Skype phone he bought at Wal-mart and plugged into the wall, while all the "techies" pay nothing to use their "alternative" VoIP setups. Meanwhile a bizarre cat and mouse game goes on, as the authorities complain about "speech piracy" and attempt to find ways to sniff out VoIP data or prevent "pirate" VoIP programs from connecting to the larger VoIP network, and the tech community comes up with increasingly elaborate ways to keep the authorities to notice what sort of data exactly it is that they're sending.

    In the meanwhile, the ongoing effort by router companies to make "smart" routers capable of identifying things like streaming media packets and handling them in a slightly more intelligent manner is scuttled-- because 80% of all streaming audio data no longer looks like streaming audio data.

    Anyone have a link to the RAT_PENIS.TXT story?
  • I will be very curious to see how they regulate a voice communication that I encrypt and send to my friend in Australia. While they might be able to regulate the companies and devices produced commercially, data protected by a layer of encryption is untouchable.

  • Questions about efficiency, bandwidth... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by wskellenger ( 675359 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @08:26PM (#7595405) Homepage Journal

    Can the existing network infrastructure handle the additional bandwidth that would be demanded, if significant, by VoIP?

    How exactly does all of this work? It seems like the existing analog infrastructure would remain in place. After all, asking everyone to replace their existing handsets isn't going to happen anytime soon. Now the phone company will A/D my speech, then send it out directing it to another server local to the number that I dialed, which will D/A my speech and reproduce it for the ear of a person in another home?

    If the above is true, it seems that it would make sense for some additional offering from the phone company that would eliminate the A/D portion of the communication and the phone line to your house would become a broadband connection. Make the handset perform the Voice-->IP conversion with embedded software, and I can ditch my dial-up ISP...

  • Underlying technology is surely irrelevant (Score:3, Interesting)

    by EmbeddedJanitor ( 597831 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @08:29PM (#7595420)
    When telephone calls went from copper to fibre did the rules change? No. So why should the rules change because the calls are going over IP?

  • hm (Score:3, Insightful)

    by machine of god ( 569301 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @08:41PM (#7595463)
    Well lets see. Technically they're only charging fees so that they have the ability to do their regulation thing right? But they don't need to regulate. So why do they need the fees?

    (I know the answer, I'm just making a point)

  • Federal and state governments could lose billions of dollars in revenue from regulatory fees if calls moved onto the Internet are no longer subject to the charges.

    You can't lose what you don't have. What they mean is they will have less to steal from.

    • Uhh, newsflash, "they" is "us". We elect them, they're drawn from our ranks, and I for one don't really want to see a financially mismanaged government lose even more revenue.

      • Uhh, newsflash, "they" is "us". We elect them, they're drawn from our ranks, and I for one don't really want to see a financially mismanaged government lose even more revenue.

        Two points:

        1.) "Us" is a word with a specific meaning. You are not using it that way.

        2.) The proper way to fix financial mismanagement is not to give the incompetent even more money. To do so would be to reward incompetence, which becomes an incentive to be incompetent.

  • Let your voice be heard! (Score:3, Informative)

    by spiritraveller ( 641174 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @08:57PM (#7595546)
    Monday's forum is open to the public and there's going to be a webcast [fcc.gov] too.

    Those of us who feel strongly about this should watch the webcast or attend in person. Be sure to submit your comments to the FCC afterwards.

    It's your government. If you think regulating VOIP is a bad idea, let it know.

    Usually, only the big companies and their lawyers take part in this process, but we all have the right to take part and let our opinions be known.

  • I said this before and I'll say it again (Score:5, Insightful)

    by melted ( 227442 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @09:08PM (#7595602) Homepage
    They either should remove taxes from my DSL bill OR from phone bill, because right now I pay two sets of taxes. They're trying to eat with two spoons, and this is not the prettiest way to eat, especially if someone feeds you. The fella giving you money may decide you're too greedy and cut off your food supply for good.

  • This is so not right (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 30, 2003 @09:08PM (#7595603)
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A200 32-2003Nov28.html

    This is insane. Telecommunications carriers routing phone calls over the internet. This article doesn't even touch upon several issues.

    1) Local companies can deliver long distance service (by passing Federal Regulation).
    2) Quality of service.
    3) Higher rates
    4) More profits for the Telco's and higher rates for users.

    Let me illustrate. The fees on your bill pay for the telecommunications infrastructure, in part by flat fee on your bill, taxes and some gets taken from each phone call. Now based on this premise, all companies will be routing over the internet. The possible/probable affects will be:
    1) distortion on phone calls because traffic is high on the internet.
    2) broken speech on calls
    3) try calling 911 and have your speech broken up so that the other side cant hear you.
    4) higher rates for everyone. Guess what, we all have to pay for the telecommunications network. Now the gov will not be making as much money for supporting the network. To maintain it their will be a raise in rates. Guess who's rates are going to be raised? Flat rate, taxes and per call usage. But what about all the money that the Telco's are making from this cost savings maneuver? That cannot be touched because it was not made on the regulated side of the house.

    Now the telecommunications companies will not be governed by the FCC on phone calls. The FCC is the guardian that keeps the Telco's in check. Now there will be no check. Great, unregulated telecommunications companies.

  • As soon as we can eliminate the need to jump from the data network over to the old depricated voice network, then we can do all voice on an IP to IP basis, with encryption. That can help eliminate one of the big nasty problems in progressing in technology: politicians trying to stick their fingers in it.

  • Basicly, pertty much the entire population has:
    A.a regular phone line
    or B.a broadband line
    and 1.a regular PSTN phone
    or 2.a VOIP phone

    Currently, the regulation is applied to phones not to lines.

    When you get a phone line or a broadband line, you pay some money each month to the provider (e.g. covad, verizon, SBC, Qwest etc).

    Basicly, the solution is that anyone who has a broadband line or a phone line gets the payment added to the monthly fee (i.e. you pay the tax on the line not on the phone or the calls).

  • Give me your money (Score:3, Insightful)

    by anti-tech ( 724667 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @09:33PM (#7595748)
    I do not know how the government will tax this, but I am certain that it will not be well thought out or fair. It will be decided by who gets the most money and/or has the best lobby. In both cases, the average citizen will lose. This is how capitalism works: extract the most money you can from everyone. Kind of like a vacation at Disneyland without the fun.

  • Example VoIP architecture (Score:3, Interesting)

    by N7DR ( 536428 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @10:22PM (#7595956) Homepage
    One reads lost of well-meaning posts about VoIP here on /. Not all of them are very accurate, however, and many of them simplify (or even trivialise) the notion of doing telephony over IP to the point where the reader can easily come away with conclusions that are incorrect.

    I would recommend that anyone who is interested in understanding the intricacies of providing a telco-equivalent level of service to a residential user in an IP environment should take a look at the specifications at www.packetcable.com/specifications/. PacketCable(TM) is the cable industry's set of standards for providing telephone service over broadband. As you will see, doing VoIP properly is not quite as simple as some people seem to believe.

    There are (of course) other ways of doing telephony over IP, but this set of specifications is free and easy to download, and the documents do give the interested a reader a good idea of the kinds of issues that have to be addressed.

  • I use Vonage and have for about 6 months. I use the data port on my phone to drop it into the exsting phone wiring for the entire apartment. So I can call from the kitchen bedroom etc. The only time I've had problems has been when the virus attacks bogging down the net. You also don't want to be downloading huge file while talking..other than those little issues, we dont need no stinkin regulations...

  • The issue is hottest where VoIP meets the PSTN (Score:3, Informative)

    by isdnip ( 49656 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @10:55PM (#7596080)
    The FCC really has no interest in regulating VoIP per se. A telephone call between two IP nodes (computer to computer) is simply not of interest to them. It is competition, sure, but that's okay; they're supposed to support competition. They generally don't, but they're supposed to.

    Here's Chairman Mike "the lesser" Powell on the subject, from http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/ DOC-241750A1.pdf

    And I think the first thing is to truly commit ourselves to understanding the technology

    and the market and the nature and the way in which it's unfolding so that we're not fearful --- we
    don't approach this with fear, but we approach it with excitement and optimism that this is
    inherently a good thing for the world, a good thing for the country, a major breakthrough in
    telecommunications and communications, and a great new opportunity and promise. We shouldn't be afraid of that.

    I personally think we should be embracing it. And so I think that that's an important part of the debate. And so we're very excited about it.

    I have decided that the Commission is now going to start exerting itself in this area much more directly. And that is not to say regulating it either, only to put a marker down that it's time to start having these policy questions in forums that matter. I really don't. And I think that we
    run the risk that if we don't move quickly to at least show that we're focused on it, then if you
    don't have a state jurisdiction do it, you will have a court do it.


    There are some big issues still unresolved. The current FCC policies, which are largely supported by the language of the Telecom Act, classify calls made through regulated local telephone companies (VZ, SBC, etc.) as "telephone exchange service" (basically, local) and "exchange access service" (basically, end legs of a toll call). Those have different prices; LD carriers usually pay more for "access". VoIP is sometimes used as a way around that. So it threatens that subsidy mechanism, which is particularly important for rural telephone companies.

    So the big questions focus on when does a VoIP call become long distance "access" rather than "local" or ISP-bound "exempt information access" (ISP access dialup calls, for now, are legally classified as not local. but telcos are usually required to treat them as if they were). And if VoIP calls are exempt, when is a call exempt? If AT&T sticks IP headers on the middle of its LD trunks, transparent to the user, does it become exempt? If the trunks are dedicated VoIP circuits? If the calls sound crappy enough?

    I'm not sure the FCC is going to come up with any great answers in a hurry, but they have enough problems figuring out what the telephone companies can charge VoIP users without having to worry about messing around with Internet user traffic.

  • Telecom Regulation (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Aaron M. Renn ( 539 ) <arenn@urbanophile.com> on Sunday November 30, 2003 @11:53PM (#7596308) Homepage
    I'm sorry, but if traditional telecom is subject to regulation, VOIP ought to be as well. The current regulatory scheme is set up, to some extent, to use local line charges to subsidize other services, in returns for some profit skimming. If we allow VOIP to bypass the local loop for high margin service (e.g. eliminating access charges for LD calls), then we need to rethink regulation.

    When your significant other (or you for that matter) has a heart attack, you want to pick up that phone and call 911 and expect someone to pick you up, not to hear that, sorry, there is network congestion or a DDOS attack on the local router. Somebody has to subsidize telecom services for the poor. Etc.

    It is certainly not fair to saddle traditional telecom with burdensome rules while exempting new players. At a minimum, the old players ought to have their regulations lifted. Of course, the slashdot crowd doesn't want that either. That would mean they would be exploiting their monopolies.
  • 3 Voice over IP applications that a lot of online multiplayer clans use to communicate during matches. The clan I'm part of is from all over the usa. I can also use the same apps to call crosscountry to relaties who also have it setup. The total cost? $50.00 a month, which is my internet bill.

    They aren't afraid of the technology itself, they're afraid of losing revenue. In time, the internet will become the de-facto transmission medium for everything; television, voice, music, any kind of media or d
  • I know this isn't very in-line with the techie mentality, but I DON'T CARE. If I want to make a phone call, I'll pick up my phone and dial. Sure, I'd want a reasonably cheap rate and choose my carrier accordingly but, as long as it works, I don't give a shit whether it's routed through Madagascar or not. This is between the government and the phone company. I don't have a place in any of it.

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