I think the final nail in this coffin is the Vonage
banner ad/masthead which describes them as "the
broadband phone company."
If they're going to claim to be a phone company, it's
reasonable that phone company regulations regarding
911, outage reporting, etc should all apply to them.
David Barak
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise:
http://www.listentothefranchise.com
NEW ALBUM, "The Sound and the Furry" available at
http://www.cdbaby.com/thefranchise
I think the final nail in this coffin is the Vonage
banner ad/masthead which describes them as "the
broadband phone company."If they're going to claim to be a phone company, it's
reasonable that phone company regulations regarding
911, outage reporting, etc should all apply to them.
But it's broadband! Shsssssh. It's an information service. It's IP. These
are not the packets you're looking for.
What all this really shows is just how outdated the regulatory framework
really is. Once VoIP (or whatever the application formerly known as VoIP)
stops looking like a PSTN emulation, this will get only more absurd than it
already is.
So, what I'm saying is that it is silly to measure these issues by ill
fitting frameworks. So, please, lets not force this emerging technology to
look like PSTN even though it happens to right now. Does PSTN style outage
reporting even make sense for a voice application? I think you can argue
that it makes little operational sense nor provides much value for the
consumer.
IMHO, the real problem with 911 & VoIP isn't that VoIP breaks PSTN E911. It
is that 911 has not evolved to deal with mobility and is so PSTN centric.
Instead of evolving, we keep trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
There's a whole ball of wax of location aware services (driven by an end
point and not the network) buried under it, not just E911. [One could argue
Vonage etc are doing nobody a favor by looking so PSTN'ish.. ]
And we need to have a regulatory framework which encourages operators to
evolve, rather than locking them into a managed economy.
Regards,
Christian
PS: I only speak for myself, and I can't do jack squat about this silly
legal disclaimer below. (Thanks Randy)
I disagree that the regulatory framework is outdated, but instead offer that the classification of IP networks has changed as new services have arisen, and been embraced by, the consumer.
I don't purchase POTS service for my home. I have cable internet, and that's it. I don't even purchase cable TV service. Just a data feed. A la carte, I purchase VOIP service from whoever I want. It stops being a mere broadband information service the instant it connects to global PSTN.
If a VOIP provider wants to avoid the label of telephony carrier, they should be strictly end-to-end service with no connection into the global PSTN infrastructure. An example of this would be enterprise internal phone systems, designed to propagate calls within a single corporate entity. They could then purchase PSTN connectivity, or VOIP access to such, from a company who IS labelled as a telephony carrier, if they want to accept and send calls to the outside world.
This could something as small as a legal office running VOIP internally for phone system/contact management, call centers deploying pure IP networks for all internal services, or any other *end user*.
If you're transiting VOIP traffic, intentionally because that's your product, or incidentally because you're an IP transit carrier and you've agreed to pass that traffic, you are, by definition if not by intent, a telephony carrier. This includes Vonage, as a VOIP<->PSTN gateway, and *each of the ISPs they connect to*, having agreed to sell them service. Propagate through peering agreements, et voila: The Internet is part of the global PSTN network.
If there's anything that's going to kill VOIP as a viable consumer platform, it will be ISP/NSP unwillingness to fall under the telecomms regulatory structure. For companies with existing networks and peering agreements, it may very well be too late to change. VOIP has grown fast enough that customers will begin shifting in droves if ISPs start announcing they won't transit or support VOIP. The impact on revenue is significant enough, in my opinion, that CEOs, or shareholders, for that matter, won't be willing to give it up.
- billn
If a VOIP provider wants to avoid the label of telephony carrier, they
should be strictly end-to-end service with no connection into the global
PSTN infrastructure. An example of this would be enterprise internal
phone
systems, designed to propagate calls within a single corporate entity.
Other examples are the INOC-DBA service which many
NANOG members use http://www.pch.net/inoc-dba/
And both SIPPhone http://www.sipphone.com and
Free World Dialup http://www.pulver.com/fwd/ have
been operating in a similar way for a couple of
years. These last two are now expanding by also
offering PSTN connectivity, but they are rooted
in a non-PSTN VoIP service.
Many groups are setting up their own similar
systems based on the ready availability of
SIP compatible phones and PBX software like
Asterisk http://www.asterisk.org. The Internet
is fundamentally a network of IP routers. The
PSTN is fundamentally a network of voice switches.
A PBX is a small voice switch. Asterisk is software
that provides PBX functionality on a UNIX PC therefore
using Asterisk and the Internet, anyone can build their
own network of voice switches for whatever purpose they
want.
I'm surprised there are not more smaller PC's
offering this as some kind of an add-on service.
Once you have a sizeable customer base using
always-on broadband, why not help your customers
set up always-on voice services. Of course in the
absence of such support from ISPs, there is a vacuum
which Skype is attempting to fill using non-standard
software.
--Michael Dillon