on 11-21-04 2:31 PM, Alexander MacLeod at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
The best part is that it [Lingo] only costs $19.95 a month unlimited to US, Canada, and all of Western Europe, with 26 calling features included. No taxes or surcharges either.
Shhh! You want the FCC to overhear?
As I understand it, there was some controversy over whether or not VOIP companies were going to be treated as ISPs or Telcos in the US. So far, it seems that they're being not being treated like Telcos and, hence, not subject to a lot of the rules and regs (and taxes/surcharges) that telcos are subject to.
Has anyone else been keeping up with this?
The FCC has ruled, for now: VoIP is NOT to be regulated as a voice/telephony service. It, like the Internet in general, is an information service. This means it is not subject to State regulation or taxes. Nor will it be taxed to death by the Feds. This is part of their supposed ongoing restructuring of the telecom regs "for the new millinium"...
FWIW,,, most of the Bells have already converted much of their backbones to IP. That means that even your POTS calls end up being VoIP at some point... Really blurs the aetheric lines between voice and data...
[snip]<minor rant> There's nothing more irritating to me than tearing open the phone/Internet bill and seeing all of those "because they can" taxes and surcharges. I know for DSL (and phone...and cellular service) in my area (SBC is my telco/DSL provider), you get nicked for a Federal Universal Service Fund (FUSF) "cost-recovery" fee. In the fine print for DSL service, SBC says that:
In other words, I get charged by my telco/service provider to help them recover their costs associated with paying money into a federal fund for subsidizing other people's phone/cel/Internet service. But hey, at least it's not a tax!
This is a case of the FCC trying to do the right thing, and getting shafted by the Bells.
The Universal Services Fund has been there for years. It was just not specifically listed on your phone bill. That fund is what made it financially viable to wire (POTS) much of rural america - places where you had to run miles of wires just to get to two houses, etc. Since that's completed, the FCC changed the fund so it now pays to wire schools for Internet service then pays their ISP bills. A great thing, IMO. It has encouraged big business to donate a LOT of computer equipment to the schools!
Here's where the intentions got screwed: The FCC made the fund a line item on your bill in order to make the public more aware of the fund and the great work it was doing. The Bells used that as a sleezy excuse for profit. They added the line item but then didn't reduce their rates by that amount! Congressional and FCC attempts to forceably fix this have been killed by lobbiests.
- Dan.
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