SMS Campaign Registry – Consumer Protection or Money Grab?

SMS Campaign Registry Through The Lens of SMS Marketing Statistics

SMS Campaign Registry – Consumer Protection or Money Grab? SMS remains one of the most effective tools for marketing. However, with the spreading of mobile phones, users receive loads of SMS spam. The mobile U.S. operators’ recent attempt at SMS regulation tries to change this. The name to it is “the (SMS) Campaign Registry“. Since … Read more

Is Faking a Caller-ID a Major Faux Pas?

Caller-Id Spoofing

Fake Caller-ID is a longtime favorite technique used by marketing companies. This technique involves using automatic dialers, also known and robocalls, to target and call consumers. It’s pretty common knowledge that this type of marketing isn’t very effective and is, in fact, quite annoying from the consumer’s perspective. That changes when the FCC decided in … Read more

STAYING COMPLIANT WITH KARI’S LAW AND BAUM’S ACT

Kari's Law ensures availability of emergency services from MLTS

The deadline rollout for compliance with Kari’s Law and BAUM’s Act has arrived. Companies and organizations of all industries sizes are now on the hook for massive fines associated with non-compliance with these measures. Follow this guide to learn more about staying compliant with Kari’s Law and Baum’s Act. Understanding Kari’s Law and RAY BAUM’s … Read more

Chicago Residents Get Stars, Stripes and Taxes for Independence Day

Hosted NAS Service image

Chicago’s 9% “Cloud Tax” became effective July 1 for all city of Chicago consumers, including businesses If you’re like most people, you probably look forward to the July 4th holiday to celebrate and reconnect with family, friends, and close business associates. Maybe you had planned on enjoying the holiday with a streaming movie service. Maybe … Read more

The VoIP Market’s Gotten a Lot Tougher for the Little Guy (Pt 2)

In many ways, VoIP regulations and taxes favor larger corporations, in both financial and structural ways.

The Price Competition Factor- Who Pays the Bill?

As VoIP services find themselves increasingly taxed at the State and Federal level, there’s a big question of who, exactly, will pay for these taxes, and how these tax increases will affect competition between large providers and small providers.

Generally speaking, large providers almost always have a price advantage over small providers. That isn’t to say large providers offer a greater value than small providers, but it is to say their economies of scale almost always ensure they can sell their services for less than their smaller competition.

This gives larger providers a distinct market advantage over smaller providers as taxes on VoIP increase. Larger providers are going to be better able to pass these taxes directly on to their customers instead of paying them out of pocket. Often they’ll be able to do so while still offering cheaper services than smaller providers.

Smaller providers face a bigger question as taxes rise- should they make their customers pay these taxes, raising their rates? Or should they pay these taxes themselves, sacrificing some of their already slim margins in order to continue to serve their customers at the same price point those customers are accustomed to?

Once again- let’s reiterate that we aren’t talking about value here, that we’re only talking about price. When it comes to price, larger providers almost always have leverage over smaller providers, which means these increased tax burdens have hurt smaller providers far more than their larger competition.

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The VoIP Market’s Gotten a Lot Tougher for the Little Guy (Pt 1)

The government has never really known what to do with VoIP.

Rules and Regulations

On the one hand, VoIP is a telephony service, and as such some people argue it should be regulated and taxed in the same vein as other telephony services (such as traditional PTSN networks).

On the other hand, VoIP is an online service, a platform that isn’t so different from any other online application you might utilize, and one that should be open to new, small service providers. Seen from this angle, the notion of taxing and regulating VoIP has been a thorny issue, to say the least.

Over the years, as VoIP has increased and improved the services it’s offered and gradually transformed further and further into a full-service telephony platform, VoIP has seen increasing regulatory and tax burdens placed upon it. These burdens have dramatically changed the VoIP landscape- especially for small VoIP providers and organizations looking to become VoIP providers.

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Is non-Interconnected VoIP a de-facto “Communications Technology”?

There’s been a debate since the early days of non-interconnected VoIP over whether the technology counted as a bit of communications technology or an information technology. This sounds like a matter of semantics but legally speaking there’s a big difference between the two. Simply put information technology and communications technology are regulated differently and a whole lot of people fear non-interconnected VoIP is going to be named a communications technology and will start to face the same sort of regulation as the incumbent telecom players.

But here’s the thing- non-interconnected VoIP has pretty much already been named a communications technology, making it subject to a whole bunch of regulations that information technology finds itself immune from, some which non-interconnected VoIP has already begun to adopt.

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Is Regulatory Creep Inevitable for VoIP?

You Are Not Supposed To Jump Over The NetThe threat of regulation, to one degree or another, often seems inevitable for the VoIP market. This wasn’t always the case. In the very early days of VoIP it seemed like the communications technology would remain independent of governmental interference, largely due to its net-based nature. Yet as VoIP use grew over the years, and as it became increasingly clear how big a player VoIP was going to be in the larger telecom market, the notion of regulation began to seem more and more inevitable and, to some people, more and more necessary to ensure the normal, everyday telecommunications technologies of the future continue provide reliable service and access to emergency services, to name just a few avenues of concern for VoIP users and potential regulators.

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Just How Big Will VoIP Market Grow? (Part 2)

Continued from “Just How Big Will VoIP Market Grow (Part 1)

Falling price point primed to match consumer expectations isn’t the only reason Point Topic believes the global VoIP market is due to hit 40 billion dollars in annual revenue by the year 2015. After all, ideas of substitution commodities and ideal price points are a little academic, a little theoretical, and they don’t quite bring the hard-nosed proof that the global VoIP market is set for some big, big changes over the next couple of years. For that sort of proof, Point Topic looked at an area they considered an important “test bed” for rolling out the technology.

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