potpourri (Re: Clearwire May Block VoIP Competitors )

Thu Mar 31 19:25:27 UTC 2005

--- Paul Vixie <vixie at vix.com> wrote:
> 
> thegameiam at yahoo.com (David Barak) writes:
> 
> > anecdote: one of my good friends uses Vonage, and
> my wife complained to
> > me yesterday that she has a very hard time
> understanding their phone
> > conversations anymore.  She correctly identified
> the change in quality as
> > originating from the VoPI.
> 
> as long as she's getting what she's paying for, or
> getting the cost savings
> that go along with the drop in quality, and is happy
> with the savings, then
> this isn't a bug.

Well, here's the catch - it wasn't the VoIP subscriber
who was complaining, it was the PSTN subscriber.  The
experience left her with the opinion that VoIP = bad
quality voice.  I suspect you'll see a lot of this...

> 
> unfortunately a lot of companies who use voip or
> other forms of "statistical
> overcommit" want to pocket the savings and don't
> want to disclose the service
> limitations.  that gives the whole field an
> undeserved bad smell.

agreed.

> 
> > Please correct me if I'm mistaken, but your
> implication seems to be "damn
> > the 911, full steam ahead."  That's great for
> optional voice (calls to
> > Panama) but not so good for non-optional voice (to
> the fire dept).
> 
> i'm not especially tolerant of governments telling
> me how safe i have to be.
> if i want a 911-free phone in my house then the most
> the gov't should be
> allowed to require is that i put a warning label on
> my front door and on
> anthing inside my house that looks like a phone.

occam's razor?  We have government regulations
regarding things which look like (and function
similarly to) light switches, no?  We have government
regulations regarding the nature of water and sewer
pipes, why not regulations regarding the nature of
data pipes?

> most american PBX's don't have 911 as a dialplan. 
> you have to dial 9-911.

We work on different PBXes.  The ones on which I work
are specifically configured to respond to 911 OR 9-911
to avoid a problem.  Would YOU want to have been the
person who didn't enable one of those options, and
thus delayed response time?

< snip regarding corporate bad behavior in configuring
PBXes>
> geez, where's the FCC when you need 'em, huh?

actually, yes - I see this as a public safety issue,
not a freedom issue.  It is in the public's interest
for 911 to work the way we expect it to, everywhere.

> i think the selective enforcement here is sickening,
> and that if old money
> telcos can't compete without asset protection, they
> should file for chapter
> 11 rather than muscling newcomer costs up by calling
> these things "phone" and
> then circling their wagons around the NANP.  

But VoIP companies calling their product a
"communications service" and saying that they're
exempt from 911 regulation, and at the same time
beating up the ISPs for deprioritizing their traffic
based on the same 911 access is completely fine, huh?

Voice is an application, but a gov't regulated one. 
In this regard it is fundamentally different from
email or ftp.

> but
> that's not going to happen,
> so i predict that the internet will do what it
> always does-- work around the
> problem.  so, domain names and personal computers
> rather than "phone numbers"
> and things-that-look-like-phones.

<snip>

> and when 20% or 50% of the homes in a region lack
> this service because the
> people who live in those homes don't want to pay a
> POTS tithe, we'll see
> some interesting legislation come down, and you can
> quote me on that.

Yes, I'm certain we will.  The legislation will likely
be due to a particularly bad fire during a power
outage or some other event which makes national news.

David Barak
Need Geek Rock?  Try The Franchise: 
http://www.listentothefranchise.com

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