At the Democratic National Convention this week, Vonage in conjunction with the Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S., threw a party at Anthem restaurant, luring politicians and others to learn about VoIP and why it shouldnt be regulated by the states but instead the federal government. (To find out more about this story see the July 27th WSJ story Vying for Attention).
Vonage has been doing a great job fighting in the senate to keep our government from taxing VoIP like POTs lines. This is exactly what the industry as a whole needs to do and Vonage should be commended for their efforts. The government has taxed telecom to death via the Universal Service Fund and various other fees. Many politicians in rural areas have gotten used to receiving a windfall from telecom and see VoIP as eroding the telecom cash cow they are used to milking.
In the end, the distinction between VoIP, e-mail and voice chat (IM where you can speak instead of type) is so minute that I have trouble understanding how the government will be able to explain to the public that VoIP is taxed while voice chat isnt and e-mail isnt. I cant fathom them taxing all three. The genie is out of the bottle at this point and we all know that IP to IP calls dont even need a service provider if you have endpoints that support VoIP. If the government gets too crazy about taxing and regulating VoIP, people will try even harder to find ways of communicating without service providers. Another option will be service providers providing voice chat over IP services similar to what Nextel does for cell phones. Will the government tax this as well? How will you differentiate voice chat from chat?
From my perspective, the government trying to tax VoIP will be like the music industry trying to stop illegal sharing of music on the internet. You shot down Napster and then an army of peer-to-peer developers develop software to get around what you just shut down.
The concern in all this is that the government will regulate VoIP service providers to death, leaving equipment providers in a apposition to deliver products that dont need service providers. Then who do you tax?
As I have said many times before, it will have to be broadband that is taxed. Taxing every service that runs across a broadband network is lunacy.
Please click here if you want to Join The Fight Against VoIP Regulation.
July 2004 Archives
If you are going to be in Chicago during ICCM Please come to our party and make sure to RSVP!!!
See you there.
Sincerely,
Rich
Rich
If you are going to be in Chicago during ICCM Please come to our party and make sure to RSVP!!!
See you there.
Sincerely,
Rich
Rich
There was a good article in the New York Times about IP Telephony this weekend that you might want to read: Web Phone Service May Have IT All, Except Many Users (registration required).
Another article in todays Wall Street Journal (if you can link to their articles I dont know how) titled 1-800-USELESS that has an interesting statistic on speech recognition. Verizon recently replaced a touch-tone system that enable 6% of their callers to meet their needs with a speech-based system that allowed that figure to increase to 20%
The mainstream acceptance of speech technology seems to coincide nicely with the launch of TMCs Speech-World Event to be held later this year. 2005 will likely be the year of speech. Come to the show to find out more.
Gmail has only been around for a few months and already its improving. Recent features include the ability to import contacts from Outlook and Yahoo! as well as the ability to add an autosignature. Finally there is support for the Safari browser that runs on the Macs OS X.
In a recent article about Gmail, I put my Gmail address on the internet to see how good Gmails spam filters are. That was on June 1st. Since that time only a few spammers have found me and Google has successfully put their messages into my spam folder. Not one reached my inbox.
The only consequence of publishing my Gmail address was that a few people from Europe (at least that is what their messages claim) asked me ever so politely if I could invite them to have a Gmail account of their own. Here is an example:
It was too good not to post.
Re: VoIP Regulation is NOT a Deal-Breaker for VoIP Adoption By Rich Tehrani, Group Editor-in-Chief, INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine.
Dear Mr. Tehrani:
I couldn't help but call my high school son and daughter to show them this shameless propaganda for your advertisers. Your assertion that we, the end users, should focus mostly on features and capabilities rather than cost does a huge disservice to even your primary audience (the telecom vendor community).
Do you not realize that regulatory red tape and parasitic fees/ taxes limit the entire market? One glance at DSL in the US vs. elsewhere in the world should convince you. In our town the ILEC portion of a business phone bill is LESS THAN HALF the total bill! Even a "101" economics student can tell you that the more you tax and regulate something the less you get of that product or service. We are at a historic tipping point. Governments should tax us directly rather than deceitfully getting third parties to do their dirty work. The PCC's Michael Powell is right, but doesn't go far enough.
There should not be any fees or taxes added to VoIP, not even 911 "surcharges". If the public saw the entire burden of government in just one place, a VAT that would choke a horse imposed every time they buy something, then maybe the outrage would prompt fewer programs, less government waste and, dare we dream, fewer politicians. At this crucial juncture focus wholly on the "prize" of a market utterly unfettered of government manipulation. After that battle is won you can then resume your public relations e-mails on behalf of your advertisers. Sincerely,
Matt Nations
Southlake, Texas
There should not be any fees or taxes added to VoIP, not even 911 "surcharges". If the public saw the entire burden of government in just one place, a VAT that would choke a horse imposed every time they buy something, then maybe the outrage would prompt fewer programs, less government waste and, dare we dream, fewer politicians. At this crucial juncture focus wholly on the "prize" of a market utterly unfettered of government manipulation. After that battle is won you can then resume your public relations e-mails on behalf of your advertisers. Sincerely,
Matt Nations
Southlake, Texas
It was too good not to post.
Re: VoIP Regulation is NOT a Deal-Breaker for VoIP Adoption By Rich Tehrani, Group Editor-in-Chief, INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine.
Dear Mr. Tehrani:
I couldn't help but call my high school son and daughter to show them this shameless propaganda for your advertisers. Your assertion that we, the end users, should focus mostly on features and capabilities rather than cost does a huge disservice to even your primary audience (the telecom vendor community).
Do you not realize that regulatory red tape and parasitic fees/ taxes limit the entire market? One glance at DSL in the US vs. elsewhere in the world should convince you. In our town the ILEC portion of a business phone bill is LESS THAN HALF the total bill! Even a "101" economics student can tell you that the more you tax and regulate something the less you get of that product or service. We are at a historic tipping point. Governments should tax us directly rather than deceitfully getting third parties to do their dirty work. The PCC's Michael Powell is right, but doesn't go far enough.
There should not be any fees or taxes added to VoIP, not even 911 "surcharges". If the public saw the entire burden of government in just one place, a VAT that would choke a horse imposed every time they buy something, then maybe the outrage would prompt fewer programs, less government waste and, dare we dream, fewer politicians. At this crucial juncture focus wholly on the "prize" of a market utterly unfettered of government manipulation. After that battle is won you can then resume your public relations e-mails on behalf of your advertisers. Sincerely,
Matt Nations
Southlake, Texas
There should not be any fees or taxes added to VoIP, not even 911 "surcharges". If the public saw the entire burden of government in just one place, a VAT that would choke a horse imposed every time they buy something, then maybe the outrage would prompt fewer programs, less government waste and, dare we dream, fewer politicians. At this crucial juncture focus wholly on the "prize" of a market utterly unfettered of government manipulation. After that battle is won you can then resume your public relations e-mails on behalf of your advertisers. Sincerely,
Matt Nations
Southlake, Texas
I just received this letter to Intel from my cousin Terry:
I just received this letter to Intel from my cousin Terry:
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