32 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981 Add this Digest to your personal   or   The Telecom Digest for December 24, 2013 Volume 32 : Issue 252 : "text" Format Messages in this Issue: Can the FCC Handle Phone Service over the Internet? (Neal McLain) ====== 32 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======

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Date: Sun, 22 Dec 2013 21:45:54 -0800 (PST)
From: Neal McLain <nmclain.remove-this@and-this-too.annsgarden.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Can the FCC Handle Phone Service over the Internet? 
Message-ID: <191d38d6-153d-462c-90e6-eff13f6a8e44@googlegroups.com>

By Mitchell Lazarus, CommLawBlog, December 22, 2013 

| Regulating IP telephony will be like updating the rules of the 
| road from horse-and-carriage traffic to modern automobiles.
|
| Slowly and carefully, the FCC is circling around a problem 
| that may be its hardest ever. The digital TV transition? Piece 
| of cake. First-on-the-planet incentive auctions? No sweat. But 
| this one is tough: nothing less than a remake of the U.S. 
| telephone system, all 120 million phones and 1.5 billion miles 
| of wire.
|
| The engineers and entrepreneurs have gotten out ahead of the 
| FCC lawyers.  Now the lawyers are scrambling to catch up.

Continued:
http://tinyurl.com/l78godr

Neal McLain

***** Moderator's Note *****

I don't know why this kind of thing bothers me, but:

     "You open an office, from which you run a single pair of 
      wires to every telephone in the neighborhood"

WRONG - The first telephones were connected with single wires,
using ground return the same way that telegraph circuits did.

     "Decades later, fast, reliable crossbar switches 
      replaced the Strowgers."

quibble - There's no mention of Panel. 

     "All of these technologies serve the same function: 
      creating a direct, metallic connection from one 
      telephone to another."

Inaccurate - Not "all" of these technologies use metallic
connections. In digital switches, they are, in fact, much like VoIP,
except the packets travel on a dedicated backbone inside the switch
instead of via the Internet, and using something other than Internet
Protocol (IP) in most cases. The author mentions "R" carrier and the
transition from metallic to virtual circuit connections later, but the
above quote is after the mention of digital switches.

     "Dialing a number ... puts in motion a cascade that ripples
     through the system, setting up connections from one switching
     office to the next, sometimes a dozen or more ..."

ALMOST /ALWAYS/ WRONG - The Bell System standard allowed no more
than five links in tandem, and even that was for calls transiting
more than two terminating toll centers. On international calls, I might
agree, but even there, a "dozen or more" links is a stretch.

--
Bill Horne
Moderator





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