[*] CRTC VoIP decision

[John Lange]

Well, here are my comments on this ruling (haven't read the ruling, only
the press release).

First. Nothing surprising here. The CRTC had tipped its hand months ago
that it was going to regulate VoIP.

Second, this is going to be good for the small guys only in the very
short term. The release says that the CRTC will back off from regulation
of prices as soon as there is competition. This means as soon as Shaw
gains any meaningful market share the gloves will come off and everyone
can drop prices below cost.

Third. The CRTC is fond of contradicting itself even within the same
press release. 

First it says "This decision is consistent with the focus in the
Telecommunications Act  on services rather than technologies."

Meaning "phone service" is "phone service" regardless of the underlying
technology.

But not 2 paragraphs latter states "The decision also means that the
CRTC will not regulate computer-to-computer (peer-to-peer) VoIP services
which reside solely on the Internet."

So "we will regulate VoIP (that interfaces to the PSTN) because we
regulate phone service regardless of technology but we won't regulate
(internet only) VoIP because its a different technology".

If they really believed that they regulate based on type of service and
not technology then it shouldn't matter what technology makes up the
endpoints or the connection between the endpoints.

-- 
John Lange
President OpenIT ltd. www.Open-IT.ca (204) 885 0872
VoIP, Web services, Linux Consulting, Server Co-Location

On Thu, 2005-05-12 at 15:14 -0500, Bill Reid wrote:
> The press release:
> 
> http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/NEWS/RELEASES/2005/r050512.htm
> 
> The decision:
> 
> http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2005/dt2005-28.htm
> 
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