Monty Solomon posted:
Gwen Shaffer
Abstract
About 36 U.S. states have enacted legislation that eliminates or reduces the
authority of local and state agencies to regulate voice-over Internet protocol
(VoIP) telephone services. This study draws on critical discourse analysis to
examine how lawmakers and telecommunications providers associated widely
supported policy goals - including job creation, technological innovation,
consumer protection, digital equity and modernization - with less government
oversight of phone and broadband services. The discourse surrounding passage
of
VoIP deregulation provides key insights into how the telecommunications
industry, and legislative sponsors of the bills, adopted culturally symbolic
phrases and touted populist goals to legitimize policies that weaken consumer
protections. Ultimately, these policy frames - found within the dialogues and
texts presented to various audiences - shape the rules and regulations
governing a technology integral to daily life.
http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/8142/6614
----------------------------------------------------
Very interesting report, which focuses only on VoIP service, as if it should
remain singled out as voice telephone was, in the pre-Internet era. I disagree
with that basic premise, i.e. that VoIP is fundamentally different from what
consumers should expect from their broadband service in general. But other than
that, the points are well taken. For instance:
"This study argues that state-level VoIP deregulation laws are based on a false
pretense. VoIP works by converting analog voice calls into packets of data. The
packets travel like other types of data, such as e-mail and videos, over the
public Internet or any private network (Cisco, 2014). However, a protocol
structures how information is carried over the wires - it does not replace the
wires. VoIP still flows over a core infrastructure that includes towers, as
well as the backhaul from those towers, into the network. And this core, wired
infrastructure is increasingly controlled by an oligopoly - a few cable
companies, and incumbent phone carriers AT&T and Verizon (Crawford, 2012). So
while video streaming, gaming, navigation, instant messaging, and even Web
sites may fall into the category of IP-enabled services, they all travel over a
set of wires."
Yes. The difference being that at least in principle, consumers should have a
much greater choice of VoIP providers than they used to have, for POTS.
However, it's true that the playing field is not level. POTS had all sorts of
rules on availability/reliability, that VoIP does not have.
*But*, retaining Title II classification of broadband service, forbearance or
not, is why we shouldn't have to single out VoIP at all. It is becoming an ever
more difficult argument to make, that voice telephony is any more critical than
broadband service in general. For most people, it's not. Not anymore.
There's an overabundance of prose, as one has to expect in these studies, but I
think the prose could be reduced considerably by sticking to the technical
realities here. Voice telephony is but one application of "advanced telecom
services," and its proper regulation became implicit as soon as the FCC
re-classified broadband service under Title II. (In the dialup era, that Tile
II classification also subsumed access to ISPs.)
That's where broadband classification needs to remain. Or at the very least,
some credible mandates, as opposed to the "trust the wolves" attitude of the
current corrupt FCC.
Bert
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:
- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at
FreeLists.org
- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word
unsubscribe in the subject line.