on 11-22-04 10:41 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > The FCC has ruled, for now: VoIP is NOT to be regulated as a > voice/telephony 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"...
Cool. Inertia is the best that you can hope for. <grin> > 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... Well, I know that noises were made about the (in)ability of law enforcement to tap phone lines due to the new technology. As if any "bad guys" worth catching are going be silly enough to conduct their conversations en clair over open phone lines. Whatever. > 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. That may be so, but I still have a hard time coping with the fact that the USF boils down to taking from Peter to pay Paul. Shouldn't people who live out in the boonies have to bear the full economic brunt of their decision to live there? Subsidy systems always distort market forces that would otherwise operate to set prices. > 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! Yes, but might these businesses have stepped in of their own accord _anyway_, without any encouragement from the feds? I mean, if you look at the schools today, big business is doing what it can to get its corporate logos in front of the kids at every opportunity (Channel One is a good example of this). I'm not saying that this is good or bad, just the way of things. Apple is a prime example of this. No one forced them to donate computers to schools in the late 70's/early 80's; they did so voluntarily. As a result, quite a few kids grew up using Apple computers and went on to buy Macs because, well, they were familiar with the brand name. No government intervention was needed for business to seize this opportunity. > 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. Sorry, I don't follow you. Wouldn't the Bells need to *increase* their rates in order to pass on the USF to their end users so they don't eat it themselves? In other words: feds charge telcos the USF to get money to reallocate => telcos pay the feds the USF fee => telcos then pass this cost onto their end users. I might be missing something here and, sadly, it wouldn't be the first time. @_@ Even if the above does hold true, it's a valuable point to consider: the feds often start out with "good intentions" and what happens? In the case of the USF, they get gamed by people in the private sector; people with an economic incentive to perform that the government just doesn't have (and never will). Someone even wrote a presentation on this as it applies to the USF and broadband/POTS: http://tinyurl.com/6xlbw Personally, I'm in favor of non-coercive relationships that benefit both parties. If your school needs computers, I don't feel that local taxes should be raised as a first resort to get the machines. Even if a particular business is not directly computer-related, I'm sure they can make an arrangement to purchase/donate the needed equipment in return for promotional consideration. I also feel strongly that schools quite often view technology as an end in itself and not as a tool, a tool that is only as useful as your basic skillset is. I remember NetDay and the importance that was assigned to getting all of the local schools wired. The problem is that unless the kids can read and write (and think) well, they won't be able to make full use of tools like the Internet. I'm sorry, but when I see a posting from someone who calls himself "WaRez DooD" and has the spelling/grammar skills to match his name (his 1337 hacking skills aside) it's hard for me to take that person seriously based on what he's written. But that's all the kids can do to express themselves (Internet subcultures aside) because too frequently, schools here don't impress students with the fact that people judge you according to your vocabulary, spelling, etc. And they neglect to give the students the skills (never mind the tools) to deal with the world so that the world will take them seriously. Anyway, since this thread is all about phone service, and how to get a lot for a little, the below may be of interest. It concerns Somalia, and the fact that the locals have to make do without a government (and rules and regs) of any kind: > Needless to say, in a land where enterprise is truly free, the customer is > king. Ten phone companies compete for business in the capital city of > Mogadishu. Landline service is connected eight hours after it's ordered. And > it only costs $10 a month. North Americans should be so well off. Cell phone > connections are instantaneous. Local calls are free and international calls > are only 60 cents to a dollar a minute. Amazingly, long distance is available > even in remote villages, due to shortwave radio hookups. Somalis proudly point > out that their phone service is far superior to anything found in neighbouring > Kenya and Ethiopia. From: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/parker1.html _Ten_ phone companies. I'm in Silicon Valley the (alleged) IT capital of the world and we sure don't have ten telcos competing here. What prompted me to write all of this is the sobering fact that the US is ranked 10th in the world in per-capita broadband penetration: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5954229/ And while it's clear that we need to "do something," I'm not sure that help from the feds is, um, ever any help. [wrings hands] Oh, and: on 11-21-04 8:27 PM, Jesse Stanford at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Your message comes but a couple hours too late. I just signed up with > Vonage :( I will see if I can cancel it, as they haven't shipped the order yet > (only charged) I wonder if he was able to get out of his contract with no penalties? The fact that Lingo is said to offer a 30-day money back guarantee impresses the heck out of me. 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