Why is Skype Launching Free Wi-Fi in Britain?
Talk about giving up more privacy! It remains to be seen whether it will meet wide adoption among business community and whether this kind of targeted marketing will not turn many end users away from service.
Will Telephony Regulators Lose Their Teeth With VoIP Adoption?
The likely passage of SB 1161 needs to be taken pretty seriously. It won’t really change the way smaller, independent telephony companies and VoIP providers operate, but it will give the big telecom oligarchs, like AT&T, free rein to cut or degrade service and to continue to charge their inflated prices. Furthermore, passage of SB 1161 may have pretty profound implications on not only home phones, but also on cell phones, as mobile devices are likely to jump on the VoIP train sooner rather than later. If VoIP is totally deregulated than that means the future of mobile telephony technology is going to be deregulated. And that’s kind of scary considering the way modern regulated telephony mobile providers already abuse their customers.
Should The USF Cover Broadband?
Some people, mostly telecom industry professionals, like to argue about how the USF is funded. There are certainly a few glaring chinks in that armor, but these day’s we’re noticing a much bigger tussle over defining the boundaries of the USF. These days, the debate rages fiercer over what technologies, precisely, we need to spread equitably around the country.
USF AND FLAT RATE PRICING PLAN (PART 2)
With the massive explosion of mobile devices fewer and fewer telecom providers continue to charge their customers based on usage, at least usage that’s as specifically defined as it was back in 1996. These days pricing tends to follow the model of flat-rate pricing, which basically states “a call is a call is a call is a call.”
Local calls and interstate calls now cost the same amount of money and get tallied together in the same column. And that’s to say nothing of the various other simplified payment plans that really mess with the idea of the USF’s tax plan. How can you accurately tax interstate communication if it’s included within an unlimited calling plan? How much of the cost of an unlimited calling plan’s price goes towards providing interstate communication?
USF and Flat-Rate Pricing Plan (Part 1)
After some deliberation the government decided to throw this tax on each provider’s interstate end-user revenue. This sounds reasonable at first. After all, every involved segment of the telecom industry produces interstate end-user revenue. But the government failed to spot a really powerful trend in the telecom industry, one that wouldn’t hit full bloom until well after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 passed, one that now dominates the telecom industry and throws a big-old wrench in this now defunct, but still operative, fee.
And that big-old wrench is known as the flat-rate pricing plan.
Could VoIP Service Become Illegal?
VoIP service, like all far reaching communication technologies, is powerful, important, and worth protecting. Choosing to protect this service may not seem like an overtly political act, but there’s something incredibly necessary about making sure we all enjoy the technological options required to experience freedom.
Freedom to Choose Your Voice Service Provider?
Recent trends in franchising operations show new approach to unified communications severely limiting franchisees freedom of choosing their own voice service provider. Franchise operators are strongly suggesting their agents to use corporate-owned systems and services by implementing the kind of subtly coercive pressure franchise operators can employ to make it sound like their agents have a choice in the matter.
Information or Telecommunications? How Regulation Affects Hosted PBX and Law Enforcement
One of the growing pains that any innovative new technology goes through inevitably involves government regulation. Leaving PBX systems unregulated might work out well for new companies that want to start up, but it’s not good for their customers. So, to ensure that they are capable of complying with things like emergency services and law enforcement, things like VoIP and hosted PBX need to be appropriately classified, and acted on accordingly.
FCC’s VoIP Regulation Dilemma
Telecommunication Regulation has been described as the most influential factor shaping the telecom market. In some ways, the influence is felt more through its absence.
VoIP and 911: placing a call
Geographic portability of VoIP puts the burden of keeping track of the source location on the operator, not the service provider. Like it or not, but customer must take the responsibility to update the location information of the telephone as the VoIP providers will not be aware of the move.