Is Regulatory Creep Inevitable for VoIP?
It’s clear that some level of regulation is necessary for the VoIP industry to ensure a certain standard for service quality. But excess regulation may lead to an unfortunate circumstance where the technology isn’t allowed to advance in any noticeable way and where the existing telecom giants retain all their incumbent power.
Does FCC Ruling on Verizon Mean Free Tethering for All?
Government is seldom credited for doing something right. I believe, that we are seeing a scenario in which regulation will actually work well protecting mobile consumers. Attaching consumer protection rules to sale of a highly demanded spectrum was a good and wise thing to do. Another example was a policy in 2009 forced AT&T to stop block any third-party VoIP application that allowed free or low-cost phone calls which circumvent that carrier’s network connection. And that’s very, very good news for the future of consumer VoIP.
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.
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.