Telecom Regulation Needs To Be Rewritten To Deal With New Technologies
from the going-the-wrong-way dept
Following on the recent news that the state of Minnesota is trying to force Vonage to comply with the same regulations the phone companies need to comply with, Business Week has a great opinion piece pointing out just how bad an idea this is. Telephony and communications regulations were all written for obsolete technologies and obsolete business models. Forcing new technology companies to fit under those laws is backwards - and will only work to harm the new technology. Instead, telecom rules need to be reconsidered and rewritten to actually match the technology they're designed to regulate. The problem, of course, is that no one is willing to rip out the current set of rules and start from scratch - so we end up trying to retrofit things into the existing system. It's a problem that doesn't look like it's going to be solved any time soon.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
