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December 15, 2006
VON Coalition Calls on Trading Partners to Stop Blocking Consumer Access to VoIP
Today the Voice on the Net (VON) Coalition, the voice for the VoIP industry, has filed papers with the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) charging more than a dozen trading partners with creating market barriers and prohibitions that are stifling Internet based communication technologies like VoIP. The VON Coalition asks U.S. Trade negotiators to help open markets to new technologies.
The VON Coalition outlined actions taken around the globe that stifle Internet based voice competition, potentially can prevent U.S. troops and business travelers from calling home, and limit investment in new markets. As VoIP technology gets integrated into more types of software and web applications, the barriers to VoIP can have a chilling effect that will inhibit a much wider range of applications, services, and devices.
In some cases, incumbent telephone carriers who also control the broadband network have unilaterally blocked users from communicating with VoIP over their broadband network. In several of these cases, the regulator has been complicit in efforts to curtail Internet voice communication. It doesn't just impact a call to a loved one or business colleague, it also threatens to disconnect U.S. troops serving oversees from their families, and thwart the kind of communications essential for lifting economies into the information age. It is for these reasons that Congress just passed the Call Home Act of 2006 (S. 2653) - to ensure that armed forces personnel serving overseas are able to affordably call home including through the "deployment of new technology such as voice over internet protocol" and by seeking "agreements with foreign governments to reduce international surcharges on such telephone calls."
Several countries have kept high entry barriers for traditional voice services and extended these barriers to Internet based voice services. In other cases, ambiguities about VoIP service classification have allowed incumbent phone companies to unilaterally block or restricted the ability of any entity, foreign or domestic, to supply VoIP services over their broadband network. In some cases the limitations on licenses over a borderless communication medium or access to and the cost of telephone number fees have proven to be a significant barrier to market entry, as is the ability to interconnect to the legacy PSTN network.
However by lowering these barriers and prohibitions, VoIP-led innovation has immense potential to extend the power of Internet communications to new corners. Consumers throughout the world will be able to use VoIP to do things never thought possible, businesses may increase efficiency and productivity and transform the way they operate, and broadband enabled communications can help economies to become engines for innovation and the creation of higher-paying Information Age jobs.
A copy of the filing can be found at: http://www.von.org/usr_files/Intl%20--%20USTR%201377%2012-15-06.pdf
Tags: VON Coalition, USTR, VoIP, Jeff Pulver
Posted by jeff on December 15, 2006 04:01 PM | Permalink
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Comments
I am interested in voip services so if anyone suggested to select whivh voip service?
Posted by: anonymous at March 15, 2007 01:19 AM
Well here in Israel (where VoiP technology was practically invented) Anyone can become a VoIP service provider - as long as you apply a license from the gov't.
Sounds easy? Well in practice the Gov't announced hearings on how to do the licensing in 2004 and they are still discussing it almost 3 years later...
Posted by: Moshe Maeir at December 18, 2006 02:39 PM
Jeff, I wish you and the VON Coalition good luck.
However it may be an up hill battle that is based on each countries political and bureaucratic process. Let’s not forget that the incumbents grew out of the PT&Ts (Post Telephone & Telegraph) and they would act in the best interest of a country and not the market.
History has many examples of how this played out, remember the proprietary signaling protocols across international boundaries, remember that some PT&Ts were successful in blocking entire NPAs in an effort to stop international toll bypass.
Countries like India have embraced VoIP as a technology enabler to grow their share of the outsource call center market, but stop short of allowing VoIP to originating or terminating within their PSTN.
Other countries like China have adopted a policy of licensing and setting the cost at (un)reasonable level – estimates as high as $2M US.
You may want to take the India policy as an example of allowing VoIP to enable a market. And replay this to countries like Malaysia which are up and coming outsourcing countries – as a start.
Posted by: Onofrio ("Norm") Schillaci at December 18, 2006 02:15 PM
Jeff,
Keep fighting the good fight. You may have a long road ahead of you in this arena, but I wish you all the success in the world.
Posted by: Michael Bailey at December 16, 2006 07:25 AM