First Coffee for August 19, 2005

David Sims : First Coffee
David Sims
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First Coffee for August 19, 2005

By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the 1993 Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration, the all-star Madison Square Garden tribute to ol’ Minnesota Mudthroat, and when we say “tribute,” we don’t mean a bunch of bands you’ve never heard of phoning in covers, we’re talking Neil Young, Eric Clapton, Johnny Cash, Ron Wood, George Harrison, Eddie Vedder, Lou Reed, John Mellencamp, Stevie Wonder, Johnny Winter, Willie Nelson, Tom Petty and Chrissie Hynde, Roger McGuinn, Levon Helm, Shawn Colvin, Tracy Chapman – where else do you get the greatest country, soul, Irish, rock and folk acts sharing the stage with a Beatle? Well, now that Cash and Harrison are dead the answer is nowhere, but you get the point, we’re talking guys who usually get tribute concerts showing up to pay tribute to Bob … huh? Oh, right, sorry, the frustrated rock critic will shut up now:

First CoffeeSM wrote a while ago about Concerto Software and Aspect Communications merging, today they’ve announced that the combined company will be named Aspect Software. Like when Chrysler “merged” with Daimler-Benz, the merged name was “Daimler Chrysler,” which is pronounced “Daimler.”

What’s interesting is this lawsuit filed by Nuvio which is, in reality, a plea by VoIP to please let us do it a better way, don’t make us conform to a dying technology.

Now that the VoIP industry’s grumblingly accepted the government’s authority to regulate, they want it to be as enlightened as possible and not to get in the way of business. The industry sees rules being set by a bunch of Washington pointyheads instead of people who know the industry or particularly care all that much about the industry. Policy is set by those who want VoIP to be basically a souped-up version of POTS since that’d make bureaucrats’ lives easier and more predictable. And bureaucrats like things to be easy and predictable. That’s why they’re bureaucrats.

People with their lives and businesses invested in VoIP see other people setting VoIP policy who aren’t driven by real-world considerations of the development of the VoIP industry and all the potential advantages and all the cool technology, but who are, in fact, driven by considerations of getting promoted, not screwing up, pleasing friends, currying favor, networking and not having to work too hard.

First CoffeeSM isn’t saying this is a correct or incorrect view of the political process, although First CoffeeSM has lived in Washington, D.C. and has worked as a journalist in the D.C. area, and is aware that policy for, say, hazelnut subsidies is rarely driven by what’s best for Americans who like hazelnuts, but more often by who’s friends with whom and What The Politically Expedient Thing To Do Here is and how to get one’s political butt covered in case something goes wrong and some counsel comes around looking for someone to blame, and who’s pouring money in whose re-election fund and how someone can make friends in this particular case which can be helpful in getting a return favor down the line.

Not saying that’s what’s going on here with the FCC at all, but just to note that that’s the public perception, rightly or wrongly, of the logrolling that goes on in D.C. When a business hears that some Deputy Assistant Undersecretary For This or That is in charge of issuing a ruling that has a real-world impact on their livelihoods and the future of their business they get real concerned since they know the decisions aren’t made solely, or even mostly on business considerations with the best interests of business in mind, but on a lot of factors of no relevance to their business.

To recap: In May, the FCC ordered that VoIP providers must make a way for their customers to reach an emergency dispatcher when they call 911, and have it work the way it works from standard phones, which is to say dispatchers must be able to identify the caller’s phone number and location on the screen, without requiring someone who’s fallen and can’t get up to rattle it off. The deadline is November 28th.

VoIPer Nuvio Corp. is challenging the FCC requiring all VoIPers to ensure old-fashioned 911 emergency call service by then. Nuvio’s got about 10,000 subscribers, not bad but not exactly an industry 800-pound gorilla, and it’s filed a motion with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia asking the court to hear the case. Fair enough.

“We have worked diligently to provide our users with 911 access,” Jason Talley, president and chief executive of Nuvio tells the AP. But, “the 120-day requirement imposed by the FCC is arbitrary and capricious and without support in the record.” Basically hey, you D.C. chairwarmin’ clock-punchers don’t know what you’re doing.

(Clever, too: VoIP’s so new of course there’s no “record.”)

And of course Nuvio has to toss in the threat of Lost Business: “The company asked the court to expedite the case and rule by Nov. 7. If there’s no decision by then, Nuvio warned it will have no choice but to start suspending some customers,” the AP writes.

When the ruling was issued in May First CoffeeSM thought it sounded more like a strongly-encouraged goal than a hard and fast deadline. Oh sure the word “deadline” was bandied about a lot, but if a company was trying, really making an effort to come into compliance, come 9:00 a.m. November 28th if they weren’t 100 percent compliant FCC storm troopers wouldn’t carry off computers and servers and padlock the building, they’d accept “material progress” or “good-faith effort” and say okay, get your act together and we’ll check back in February.

And that still might very well be the case. First CoffeeSM will be shocked if anyone but the genuine scofflaws, those with absolutely no intention of complying will actually be thrown out of business.

Check out Talley’s comment again: Hey, we’re trying. We have no objection to providing 911 for our customers, we think it’s a good thing, if we could wave a magic wand we’d have it in place tomorrow, but we’re the guys who are making this technology work on the street, and some kid three years out of Georgetown Law School who couldn’t find a job in the private sector but whose daddy is friends with a senator isn’t going to decide that November 28 is a nice, round date to fill in on his report and expect the real world to accommodate that when we can do a lot better than that, given time.

In other words, in the eyes of the industry the FCC’s stance is “a decision wrapped in good intentions but tied to outdated concepts,” in Roy Mark’s apt wording.

Nobody who objects to providing 911 service belongs in the VoIP industry, let’s get that clear. “I absolutely share the [FCC’s] concern about E911 services and VoIP,” said Talley. “I think maybe they were a little exuberant, though. The order was put together really quick and may not be based on the best technology useable out there,” Mark quotes him as saying.

What the industry wants is to rethink 911. “To enable E911 service, VoIP providers must obtain access to incumbent local exchange carriers systems, interconnection facilities, numbering resources, public service answering points and other critical elements that traditional telephone companies employ to provide E911 service,” Vonage said in a filing. VoIPers, however, would like to run it through routers, and provide maps, photos and other cool stuff the current system doesn’t do but which is possible with VoIP.

Which is where the business mindset smashes into the hide of government thinking. Government doesn’t want innovation, thinking outside the box, risk-taking or cool ideas. Government wants order, stability, regular raises and promotions and do it this way because this is how we’ve always done it and it makes my life easier.

That’s the problem here. Government wants VoIP to look, act and work like the 20th century technology they already know how to regulate. VoIP’s saying look, the whole point here is that there’s a better way of doing things, we’re not interested in complying with an obsolete industry model we’re burying, get out of the way and see what we can do that’s better than that. Which is why they’re in business and bureaucrats are in government.

The industry deserves the chance. They deserve government staying out of the way while they show how much better than the current system they can do.

As Mark suggests, First CoffeeSM thinks the lawsuit’s just to buy time. Talley knows he won’t win, but maybe he can use government’s own inefficiency and bureaucracy against it as he buys time for the industry to create the better way of doing 911 before they have to waste a great deal of time and energy complying with outdated practices on outdated technology mandated by outdated minds.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.



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