The Hidden Costs Of Being A VoIP Provider
from the aflac! dept
An idea that got kicked around when eBay bought Skype and all the talk of "synergies" started was that eBay -- nor Skype, for that matter -- seemed to understand everything that was involved in running a phone company. Skype may have solved the technological angle, but there's a lot more to it than that, particularly dealing with govermental regulation. Just today, Jeff Pulver points to an FCC order dealing with wiretapping on VoIP networks and noticing it will apply to a much broader range of VoIP services than previously thought, including those that don't interconnect to the public phone network. Given the current political climate, this isn't too surprising, but Kevin Werbach points out the bottom line -- that the
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Aha
Will talking to someone over the internet cost $4.75 per minute in the near future?
Land lines have worked just fine for me when making international calls -- there is no VOIP software that can make phones ring when their computer is turned off.
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What's the point though?
Isn't the point of phonetapping supposed to be so they can catch criminals/terrorists and protect people?
My point is in order for tapping to be useful, they will need the ability to tap ALL VOIP communication. And with all the MMPO games out there with VOIP capabilities, that's not going to be easy.
What's to stop criminals/terrorists from starting a bot server for Counterstrike (or an even lesser known game for that matter), connecting, and communicating in this way?
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Re: Aha
Within the continental US, long distance is basically free. You can get a flat-rate, all-the-US-is-local plan for about what local service cost in the early 80's. And, that's without accounting for inflation.
We used to pay around $30-40/month for POTS. And, 10-15c per minute for domestic long-distance was cheap. I can get a freakin cell phone with 1000 minutes and no long-distance charges for that.
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Re: What's the point though?
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Asterisk...
In addition, word is that with Asterisk you can run VOIP in a manner that allows a great deal of flexibility that normal phone lines can deal with. http://www.asterisk.org
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Re: What's the point though?
My point is there are lots of sneeky ways to get a message accross...
And even if I am completely wrong about this idea, at least I know the difference between "your" and "you're" and also know how to use them correctly in a sentence...
OHHH STICK!
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Re: Aha
long distance is seperate carrier - was $29.95 and
I have the absolute bare bones cheapest plane. I
had about 20 minutes of local calls as I was out
of town. And while cell phones are great when
outside, service from within my house is piss poor
on a good day, and I'm in a fairly urban area. For
anything other than a very quick call, cell phone
from the house (for me) doesnt cut it
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E911 and phone taps, caller id
taps.
There never was any interest in the support of 911 by the government. The phone companies had operated with switches thru the 80's and almost to the 90's that were in some cases running relay logic.
They were only forced to upgrade to support the capability of your gooverment to spy on you. There was a handy tax, (which has not expired BTW) that supports 911 service on current copper regulated telco's.
The are just burning to get the same crap dumped on VOIP.
As to actually tapping VOIP conversations, sap phones, which are open source and such tools as Asterisk pretty much mean that is meaningless if you can write code to encrypt the data stream. All you need to do is bridge any VOIP termination into something like Asterisk, and you can do anything you like with it, including your very own
encryption.
So what will they do to stop that?
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Re: Aha
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Costs of Running a VoIP Company
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Re: Aha
What, you thought your phone was magically powered by fairy dust?
In other news, trees are wood.
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No Subject Given
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Re: Aha
http://www.fcc.gov/voip/
As for the Techdirt article, it referred to E911 and wiretapping ability and the costs associated with it. Not international calls.
The very fact that VoIP providers aren't your major carriers keeps them from being regulated in the same manner. They are different, cheaper and better.
Check out these international prices:
https://www.vonage.com/intrates.php
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Re: E911 and phone taps, caller id
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Ebay VoIP
Aren't E-bayers as notriously fanatic on line as most of the gaming community? Couldn't Ebay have bought Skype simply to have an in house voice system like Microsoft Live?
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Re: Aha
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