32 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981
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The Telecom Digest for December 25, 2013
Volume 32 : Issue 253 : "text" Format
====== 32 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
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Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
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Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2013 16:34:05 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Merry Christmas
Message-ID: <20131224213405.GA3770@telecom.csail.mit.edu>
For those whom share the tradition, I wish you and yours the best of
the holiday season and a Merry Christmas.
Bill
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)
No matter where you go, there you are
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2013 10:23:52 -0500
From: Fred Goldstein <invalid@see.sig.telecom-digest.org>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Can the FCC Handle Phone Service over the Internet?
Message-ID: <52B9A708.6080107@ionary.com>
On 12/23/2013 12:45 AM, Neal McLain wrote:
> 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
>
Mr. Lazarus appears to understand VoIP about as well as a good farrier
understands electronic fuel injection. Perhaps he's shilling for the
Bells, who want to maintain confusion in order to get out of their
regulatory obligations.
Mr. Moderator is going easy:
> ***** 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.
Well, that didn't work very well, though it took a while before they
figured out twisted pair.
> "Decades later, fast, reliable crossbar switches
> replaced the Strowgers."
>
> quibble - There's no mention of Panel.
>
Crossbars and panel only existed in certain areas. Both were "Bell"
inventions, to some extent NIH reactions to their non-ownership of
Strowger's patents. Panel and Strowger couldn't directly interconnect
(no common signaling protocol). Strowgers remained in service in
service here and there until around the turn of this century, after the
last crossbar and panel were long gone.
But in any case, the technological transition from manual to Strowger to
crossbar to analog-SPC to digital did not require a change in the
fundamental rules. Technology changes.
And that's where he goes totally off the rails. He confuses IP with the
Internet. He assumes that the telephone network is going to become an
Internet application. This simply isn't true, at least not with the
Internet we have. The majority of "VoIP" is not really Internet at
all. It is voice using IP, on separate, managed networks such as
PacketCable and MPLS SIP trunks. The better term for this non-Internet
term is VuIP; the term "VoIP" should be reserved for actual Internet
voice, which runs over ("the top" of) the Internet.
In VuIP, the voice service provider controls the layer below IP; in
VoIP, they don't, and that's a huge difference. VuIP works much better,
since the Internet is designed to discard random packets, which is
incompatible with good voice. So telephone companies are gradually
replacing old TDM gear wit newer VuIP gear. It is transparent to the
user. It can still feed a copper analog loop, via a media gateway
(inside your cable modem, in a street pedestal, or in a central
office). So it needs new rules as much as cars with fuel injectors NEED
absolutely new traffic rules because they don't have carburetors, and
the rules of the road were written by people who assumed that cars had
carburetors. (Sort of "like a fish needs a bicycle"). But I don't think
the rules of the road were written by farriers.
About 6% of US "phone" lines are actual over-the-top VoIP, and that
number may have peaked. VuIP is growing, since it is merely an internal
technical change. Mr. Lazarus gets that totally wrong and pretends that
VoIP over the Internet is taking over.
The Internet was created as the content of common carriage, so it is not
regulated as the PSTN is. The telephone companies are claiming that by
using the Internet's fuel injector, IP, they are somehow no longer
telephone companies. Beware. It is merely a ruse to pick your pocket.
--
Fred R. Goldstein k1io fred "at" interisle.net
Interisle Consulting Group
+1 617 795 2701
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