According to a Forbes article, the recent Supreme Court Ruling against a small Internet service provider called Brand X Internet will open the door to VoIP blocking. The Supreme Court ruled that cable operators don't need to share their broadband access lines with other businesses. Thus, the Forbes article "theorizes" that this will lead to VoIP port blocking by the cable broadband providers by stating, "That's good news for big cable companies but could be trouble for voice-over-Internet Protocol providers like Vonage, which sell digital phone service."
Jeff Pulver seems to agree that port blocking will occur when he is quoted in the Forbes article, "I believe it's a matter of when, not if. If I'm a service provider offering my own voice-over-broadband offering, and I've got the ability to block my competition, why not?"
Respectfully to both Forbes and Pulver, I say, "hogwash!"
All it takes is one 911 call to fail due to cable companies performing port blocking and the million dollar lawsuit that will ensue will keep the cable companies in line. The liability is just too great. The FCC will step in and prevent this from happening. If not the FCC then certainly Congress will step in if rampant port blocking were to occur.
The financial risk to smaller broadband providers is just to risky to "test" the legality of port blocking. As for the larger broadband players, let's just imagine for argument sake that tomorrow Cablevision (based in New York + Northeast) started port blocking anyone using Vonage that uses Optimum Online high-speed Internet. I would guesstimate that on any given day there are hundreds of 911 calls in the New York/Northeast area. Of those hundreds of 911 calls, lets say just 20 of them use Vonage. That's 20 potential lawsuits in one day. Now let's assume these 911 lawsuits aren't filed for a month or so. That's 30 days x 20 lawsuits per day = 600 potential lawsuits before Cablevision realizes what a terrible mistake they made? C'mon, they're smarter than that. I'm sure they have lawyers that assess this kind of liability risk. Sorry, Forbes, but port blocking by the cable broadband providers just ain't gonna happen.
Russell Shaw has some thoughts on this as well.
Supreme Court Ruling Results in VoIP Blocking?
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Supreme Court Ruling Results in VoIP Blocking? TrackBack URL : http://blog.tmcnet.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/7931
Interesting arguments Tom makes about VoIP blocking and how the liability is too great for anyone to do this in the future over cable. He could be right but I wonder if broadband providers aren’t coming up with ways to... Read More
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Blocked cable users would switch to a phone line DSL. Cable would lose the customer.
It's been said, but I'll reiterate the fact that these cable and phone companies are eventually gonna be ISP's primarily - providing the pipe to the house. Enter Wimax too.
They certainly could legally port-block VoIP. First, they send notices to all users about changes to the terms of service, and notification that on that Vonage, etc would stop working. They then follow up by identifying the users using Vonage/etc (by sniffing) and offering them to switch to the cable co's service for free, and reminding them it won't work after . Could there be a 911 call that doesn't go through? Yes. But pretty quickly people realize their phone doesn't work, so the number of 911 calls missed would be much lower than you mention.
New users aren't an issue with 911; they plug it in and it doesn't work.