California Demands Licensure For VoIP Providers 265
muonzoo writes "Looks like California will be wrangling up the VoIP companies and mowing them down. Or, at least licensing them. CNET has a story about state legislators' push for all VoIP companies in the state to carry a Telephone Operator License. CNET also has a quick blurb about Vonage and how they have recently started charging customers a 'Regulatory Recovery Fee.' Ugly stuff for a young industry." Here's our earlier post about Vonage charging the regulatory recovery fee.
Operator license = fees and taxes (Score:4, Insightful)
Stay away from my internet, dammit!
Indicative of the business environment in Cal. (Score:2, Insightful)
6 more days til the vote.
Vonage fees? (Score:3, Insightful)
I *really* don't want my VoIP service to wind up with more than 6 different taxes like my old Pacific Bell service did.
I pay PUC/etc taxes on my internet connection already. I really don't want to be double-dipped for my VoIP service.
This is stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Makes sense to me..... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Just wait for the Taxinator to get in office... (Score:3, Insightful)
California doesn't need any more taxes, we need to cut spending. That isn't going to happen with Davis, et al in power. Arnold or McClintock are the only ones who have expressed any interest in cutting spending.
Re:Internal VoIP Included? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you sell your VoIP services to end users?
If you answered yes to either/both of those, then you probably are affected. If you're not a VoIP provider then I doubt you have anything to worry about.
I don't see this as as big a deal as the submittor of the article does. If a company is a telephone provider, regardless of the trasmission mechanism used, then they should have to play using the same set of rules/regulations as the other telephone providers.
VoIP tax is going to happen. (Score:2, Insightful)
Regulators are typically of the same general mind set as monopolists, and in an earlier day they would probably all have worked for railroads. But while VoIP offers some of the same services as telephone, there are significant differences in the technology, as pointed out in many posts here. I don't think the current laws will support the CPUC position, but just like chumming for fish, where there is money to be had, the politicos will be swarming.
VoIP has a big potential to cut into the bottom line of some DEEP POCKET telephone companies, and you can bet these people's money will grease the pockets of the politicos in California.
Typical (Score:3, Insightful)
This legislation serves two real purposes: winning over many Democratic supporters and interest groups and giving Democrats ammo to fire against Arnold when he repeals them. Note, the last reason is fairly typical of any political group.... Clinton signed environmental legislation that was extremely harsh, knowing that if Bush won he'd have to repeal them which would let Democrats call him anti-environmental (If Gore won, no one would care about him repealing the laws, as it didn't fit into the stereotype)
Recent CA laws passed include:
- granting illegal immigrants the right to driver's licenses
- enacting the nation's toughest financial-privacy and antispam measures
- expanding the rights of gay domestic partners
and coming up: requiring businesses with 50 or more employees to provide health insurance or pay into a state pool to purchase the coverage---Lane
Re:Voice IM? (Score:3, Insightful)
What they fail to realize is that this is the Internet age. The location of a company hardly matters any more. If Yahoo chooses to spin off their VoIP division and move it to Arizona as a subsidiary, the end user wouldn't even notice.
Being the first state to tax something Internet related is a great way to drive businesses out of your state.
Re:Bullshit (Score:1, Insightful)
If the VoIP transmission is coming across a telephone or cable company's lines I can see why they would want the VoIP companies to have to play by the same rules.
New vs. Old (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:i just don't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
It isn't, if you don't mind calls that don't have guaranteed quality, calls that are insecure, calls that may be tapped, no guarantee that you can port your number to another service, no guarantee that a 911 call will go through, no ability for a 911 dispatcher to determine your location, no ability for the operator to break into your call when someone needs to reach urgently, etc., etc., etc.
While we slashdot-type people can make a reasonable decision as to whether we really want all this stuff (and hence can decide rationally whether to pay for it), is it really likely that the typical consumer is really going to understand that this service is different from a regular landline telephone? After all, with some of these services, he's going to be using the same telephone that he's been using for years -- so he's going to expect it to work the same.
Yes, I hate regulation too. But if this stuff is going to be marketed as a replacement for regular telephone service, then it had better provide what the typical consumer expectes from his telco. (On the other hand, if it's marketed clearly just as a kind of "don't you dare depend on this for anything; I'm just pretending to be a telephone but I'm not one really" service, then you're right: it shouldn't be regulated.)
Re:Operator license = fees and taxes (Score:2, Insightful)
There was a story on the news last night that another big company is leaving Portland (OR) to move to Nashville citing that it's more business friendly. That basically translates as "lower taxes". Other companies here have moved up to Vancouver WA, about 10 miles north. So, in effect, Portland's rising taxes are pushing the businesses that support the economy aay.
You know, I watched Arnie talk a little bit about California, and he made a point that the solution is to cut the spending, not raise the taxes.
Gotta say, if I were in Cali, I'd be paying a lot of attention to that guy. At the very least, I hope he creates ripples over here.
Re:Here's a link (Score:1, Insightful)
So true. Sigh.
Triple Bullshit on you (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just wait for the Taxinator to get in office... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, really!!
Who makes the laws in California?
How is being the executive going to reduce programs?
Cut spending where? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Indicative of the business environment in Cal. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cut spending where? (Score:1, Insightful)
As I've said before... (Score:5, Insightful)
AOL Talk, MS Netmeeting, heck even Battlecom allow you to carry voice over IP. But the difference is you can't dial up you phone number from Battlecom and make your phone ring.
The VOIP in these cases are companies that tie into real telephone networks. They issue real telephone numbers to their customers. You can use a normal telephone to reach them. That means they are regulatable by the same standards as normal telephone. The regulators own the address space, not just the service standards.
The easiest way to avoid this regulation and fees is not to tie into the telephone network, don't use the same 7/10 digit address space and don't claim you can call normal telephones. You do that and there's no fees and no regulation.
double tax (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Internal VoIP Included? (Score:3, Insightful)
If someone is acting as a PROVIDER of phone services, then the tax needs to apply to them.
Re:Wow (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, speaking as an amazingly naive person who isn't a CA resident, what I've read made it sound like the reason for the CA deficit was a vast reduction in capital gains and income tax revenue brought on by the collapse of the stock bubble and many Silicon Valley companies. Obviously, the concept of a "deficit" comes from spending money, so you can always chase your tail, but the fact that it hit all at once was at root a sharp reduction in income rather than a sharp increase in spending.
Some businesses are running out of CA. Some businesses are moving in. CA would be the 5th biggest economy in the world if it were a nation. No one can afford to ignore it as a market. It has problems, but it isn't the worst place in the world to do business.
I don't think that advocating basic health care is "providing everything for ... workers." Regardless of whether you think that the government should provide health care or not, the fact is that the government already provides health care through Medicare, Medicaid, state programs, and laws that require hospitals to treat emergency room patients whether they have insurance or not. CA is trying a solution to a national problem that will not go away, even though this White House Administration would like to. There are 43 million Americans without health insurance of any kind. What is wrong with trying a new solution to the problem?
As for the other things, they of course all sound nice... but in practice only serve to discourage business and drive away jobs. There's a limit to the amount of whoring out to business that a state can do without penalizing its own citizens. To take your argument to its conclusion, we should have slave labour camps, no minimum wage, and allow unlimited pollution on private property. Most people agree that there should be limits to the amount of exploitation that businesses have. As I mentioned above, right now small businesses are ignoring the health needs of their workers, which is variously burdening the workers themselves, the government sponsered safety nets, and the taxpayers that pay for those programs. I think it is reasonable to expect the free ride to end at some point. This isn't the particular implementation I'd favour, but it might work.
An elected government has a responsibility to represent the citizens that elected it, of course, and some of the citizens apparently feel that there are good reasons to take care of non-citizens. Speaking of amazingly naive, why do you think those "illegal" immigrants are in this country? Are they simply wintering here as a vacation? They are here because they do jobs that no one else wants to do. You can argue about whether that is a good thing or not, but that is undeniably what is happening. Some citizens, although apparently not you, feel that if people are going to be in this country, they should have to follow the same laws as the rest of us. That means that they should have a license if they are driving. A license also allows some method of allowing them to have bank accounts, which decreases the cash economy, in turn decreasing theft and criminal predation upon this population.
I like the way you call my post naive and in the same sentence claim to know the "reason" behind a bill in the state legislature. Legislation rarely has a single reason. Often it is a compromise. If a majority is required to pass it, and that majority is composed of people with differing agenda, then the odds are that they have different reasons for voting that way.
The most important point is that there has to be some limit on business, and that the limits CA imposes are reasonable if unpalatable to some conservatives. My favorite Bush argument is that the economy would be "a lot worse" if he hadn't been shilling for big companies and the upper class for the last three years. How would it be worse? Would we be standing in line at soup kitchens? Would we be building new dams? Eating each other and cooking our pets to stay warm? With his argument, he can do anything at all and claim that it could have been worse. No shizit, it could have. My question is: why isn't our economy better yet?