Follow Me on Tweeter

David Byrd : Raven Call
David Byrd
David Byrd is the Founder and Chief Creative Officer for Raven Guru Marketing. Previously, he was the CMO and EVP of Sales for CloudRoute. Prior to CloudRoute, He was CMO at ANPI, CMO & EVP of Sales at Broadvox, VP of channels and Alliances for Telcordia and Director of eBusiness development with i2 Technologies.He has also held executive positions with Planet Hollywood Online, Hewlett-Packard, Tandem Computers, Sprint and Ericsson.
| Raven Guru Marketing http://www.ravenguru.com/

Follow Me on Tweeter

Yesterday Texas Governor Rick Perry implored attendees at Right Online, a conference for conservative bloggers and social networkers, to follow him on “Tweeter”. Aside from the incorrect naming of the site, it is indeed interesting that nearly every candidate running for the office of President of the United States is utilizing the Internet to get out their message. Jon Huntsman, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and others have first announced their intentions by launching a YouTube video or tweeting to their followers. Of course, we also have the less than stellar usage by Congressman Anthony Weiner posting an undesirable photo to one of his followers. In any event, the Internet has reached a point of universal acceptance when a group of middle aged politicians believe they must have an Internet presence in order to be successful in their political endeavors. Their actions demonstrate that they are acknowledging a changed environment.

Why then does the FCC approach reforming the Universal Service Fund (USF) and InterCarrier Compensation (ICC) using the outdated costs, usage and pricing models associated with TDM and the PSTN? That is the question raised by Google in their most recent response to the FCC’s efforts to establish new guidelines for the USF and ICC. Google refers to this backward looking approach as “Letting the Voice Network Tail Wag the Internet Dog”.

Google points out that in the year 2000, PSTN interstate and intrastate voice traffic was more than twice the US Internet traffic or 66,000 Terabytes (TB)/month versus 28, 000 TB/month. However, over the next ten years the relationship between these numbers flipped dramatically. PSTN voice traffic has plummeted to 36,000 TB/month while Internet traffic in North America has grown to 5,723,000 TB/month. Furthermore, the Internet traffic includes 21,000 TB/month of VoIP transported by ITSPs such as Broadvox and service providers such as Cypress Communications, Skype and Google Voice.

Numbers such as these reflect the broader opinion that the FCC must consider the future direction of broadband access and utilization as it determines the new rules. As stated by Google “…per-minute voice traffic origination and termination charges are a persistent but unwelcome relic from the circuit-switched telephony era, and not best-suited for modern IP traffic and networks.” It is correctly noted during this exchange between Google and the FCC that IP network costs are best represented through an understanding of capacity rather than minutes of use.

There will be no reforms for several years, but if not correctly devised, the impact on the Internet and IP related services and applications will be devastating. Cost will rise, innovation will be hampered and competition reduced. None of this would be good for America and, in turn, the global IP community. So, FCC, take a lesson from this year’s crop of politicians and look towards the future, not the past, to achieve the desired reform. We will be better served by reform that is markedly different and reflective of the direction of IP Carrier networks and agreements.

Just make sure that the rule makers know it is “Twitter” and not “Tweeter”.

Enhanced by Zemanta


Feedback for Follow Me on Tweeter

Leave a comment

Featured Events