The FCC approved the SBC Communications / AT&T and Verizon Communications / MCI mergers this afternoon after several days of intense discussions and delays.
Of particular interest is the requirement that SBC and Verizon offer "naked DSL" access, as well as a strong commitment to "network neutrality." What the former means is that DSL service will have to be "unbundled" — in other words it has to be sold as a stand-alone product. So Verizon, for example, cannot force customers to sign up for its circuit-switched voice service in order to be allowed to buy DSL service.
Neutrality means that Internet subscribers must be allowed to use any IP service, such as VoIP, over their Internet connection. The companies will not be allowed to block subscribers from content.
Monday, October 31st, 2005 | Posted in FlyFone | No Comments »
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Telecom and data network research firm Infonetics predicts that the North America VoIP market will grow from the US$1.24B that it was in 2004 to over $23B in 2009 – an increase of 18 times in just over five years – quite an aggressive prediction.
“VoIP subscriber growth is skyrocketing right along with revenue growth: we’re forecasting triple-digit growth from 2005 to 2006, with 6 million new subscribers a year every year from 2006 to 2008, when there will be over 24 million,” said Kevin Mitchell, principal analyst of Infonetics Research and author of the report.
While Vonage has the largest market share right now, Infonetics says that stiff competition from cable companies Time Warner and Cablevision are making major gains, eroding Vonage’s market share.
The big three of VoIP are Vonage (32% of the market), Time Warner (25%) and Cablevision (19%). No other VoIP service provider has more than a 3% market share.
The Voice over IP Security Alliance (VOIPSA), a non-profit that "aims to fill the void of VoIP Sercurity related resources" is working on a open VoIP security threat taxonomy project.
VOIPSA is seeking help from individuals and organizations interested in furthering the goal of security through a collaborative, consensus process. Some of the issues they’re interested in working on include social threats (such as misrepresentation or theft of service), eavsdropping, interception and modification, and intentional/unintentional interruption of service.
If you’re interested, you can check out VOIPSA’s Taxonomy Wiki or Homepage.
This sounds like a good way to go about documenting, and then later addressing, the security threats facing VoIP and child technologies that come out of it. Since VoIP is already mission critical for so many businesses and even emergency relief organizations now (and of course this is only increasing), working on these security issues is critical.
The "furor," as Wired calls it, regarding the FCC’s ruling that VoIP services have to comply with wiretap regulations is only growing.
The New York Times reports that the ruling’s impact on universities will cost schools more than US$7 billion to comply with:
The action, which the government says is intended to help catch terrorists and other criminals, has unleashed protests and the threat of lawsuits from universities, which argue that it will cost them at least $7 billion while doing little to apprehend lawbreakers. Because the government would have to win court orders before undertaking surveillance, the universities are not raising civil liberties issues.
The order, issued by the Federal Communications Commission in August and first published in the Federal Register last week, extends the provisions of a 1994 wiretap law not only to universities, but also to libraries, airports providing wireless service and commercial Internet access providers.
Meanwhile, a story from Wired tracks outrage from civil liberties groups and technology pioneers:
Critics say the rules make it harder for new U.S. internet telephony companies to get off the ground.
"What the FBI has asked for, and what the FCC has to date given them, would require any new developer of a voice-based technology to submit their application for the FBI’s approval before even one single person on the internet can try it," said John Morris of the Center for Democracy and Technology"If the FCC continues to give the FBI every power it asks for, we will see a tremendous diminution of innovation in the United States and innovation will move overseas to places that are more supportive of small innovators."
The ruling could be particularly troublesome for companies using a peer-to-peer architecture that doesn’t route calls through a central server, and which may not technically be able to comply. The FCC order says that all calls on such a system — not just the ones to and from the traditional network — have to be wiretappable using CALEA standards.
The end result, according to Jeff Pulver, who co-founded Vonage and runs a free P2P internet telephony service called FWD, is that the rules "take away our freedom to innovate and take away inspiration for people to be entrepreneurial in this space."
"This comes at a time when it’s most susceptible to being screwed up," Pulver said. "The technology is still in its adolescence. This is a transformational current — we are talking about the communications and computing industry transforming into something that has never existed before. This is not your parents’ telecom service."
The ruling appears to pull in the best-known P2P telephone service, Skype, which eBay recently purchased for $2.6 billion. Skype offers optional pay services called SkypeIn and SkypeOut that permit customers to receive calls from, and make calls to, the traditional phone system. That means it will have to re-engineer its system to make its customers wiretappable, even during free peer-to-peer calls between Skype users — something that might not be possible. The company did not return a call seeking comment.
These rules are troubling from so many aspects – civil liberties, cost, and the hinderance of tech innovation and development.
