France Demands Skype Register As a Telco 209
jfruh writes "Skype made a name for itself by largely bypassing the infrastucture — and the costs, and the regulations — of the legacy telecommunications industry. But now the French telecom regulator wants to change that, at least in France. At issue is not the service's VoIP offering, but rather the Skype Out service that allows users to dial phones on traditional networks. Regulators say that this service necessitates that Skype face the same regulations as other telecoms."
Correct (Score:5, Insightful)
And they are correct. You tie into the Telco, you need to play by the regulations for Telco.
Why Silicon Valley did not happen in France (Score:1, Insightful)
Where does Skype connect to France's phone system? (Score:2, Insightful)
If Skype has VOIP-to-POTS gateways physically located in France, they need to follow France's legacy telecom rules. If the gateways are located elsewhere (e.g. in another EU country), France shouldn't have any standing to impose their regulations on them.
Re:Then Leave (Score:5, Insightful)
France doesn'r relly have high taxes.
I am defensive for several reasons:
1) the word taxes has become a knee jerk scare word. Being further seperated form services. Meaning peopel talk about cutting taxes, and everyone loves it. A politician saying that the result is loosing servcies, and everyone villifys them.
2) IT's about value.
3) France is the US's first and oldest ally. The US would not exist without France. The general anti-france meme in the US is short sight, unfair, and based in complete ignorance.
Then when people say ignorant shit like "France taxes the crap out of its citizens so we should have seen this coming."
it just general irritates me. It is used to scare people. "You don't want to be like France, there healthcare means that are taxed really high!"
Re:Correct (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why Silicon Valley did not happen in France (Score:4, Insightful)
And be replaced by what? The closed-source, proprietary protocol Skype?
Imagine that POTS is shut down and all that is left is a bunch of proprietary VOIP services, none of which interoperate with each other. Yeah, that's really a step forward!
Re:As anal as France is.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that Skype facilitates incoming calls only, so they are more like a foreign telco than a local one. And because they don't provide POTS to consumers, it is impossible to fulfill France's telco requirements to be able to identifiy the location of an emergency call. At best, France's laws are out of step with the 21st century. Or else, no Skype is like a foreign telco, routing incoming calls, and not a local telco, which provides outgoing calls.
Re:As anal as France is.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that they never actually had to install any physical telecommunications equipment. They provide an overlay network. It is a network that uses the existing phone and internet networks to provide functionality. They take advantage of the fact that communication over a phone handset is fundamentally no different than sending bits over the internet. An actual telecom company provides access to some public resource that they were granted stewardship over by a government (e.g. phone lines, fiber cables, wireless spectrum, etc). In some cases they actually own those resources. This just seems like another case of a European government trying to shakedown a rich company for money, (e.g. Microsoft, etc).
If I was skype I would just turn off access to France and let the people fire their politicians then turn it back on.
It won't be long before Europe declares wikipedia and youtube public utilities and start trying to extort money from them too
Re:Yeah so they can tax the company to feed the go (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet, strangely, people aren't dying in the streets from starvation and lack of tyres in France. If the "socialist minded French way" means a reasonably functional country, with happy people enjoying a decently high standard of living while working 3-hour days, why the f*** would I take advice from someone who lives in a country where typical workers grind through 40-hour workweeks (if they are lucky not to need 80 at minimum wage) and still have sucky lives?
Re:As anal as France is.... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the justification is that telephony is a vital service in the modern world. You need it just to live, otherwise basic stuff like getting a job or dealing with your government is near impossible.
In exchange for being allowed to provide a vital service everyone needs and which is thus a somewhat captive market you have to meet some basic requirements.
Re: Short sighted not to regulate (Score:5, Insightful)
French telecommunication regulator is right to try to impose operator burdends on Skype.
1/ More and more people are adopting this service a primary phone service because of SkypeIn and SkypeOut feature. This means that there will be more and more case where user will need to make emergency calls. This lack of emergency call support is a shame. So the post above is ... very shortsighted. One day you may need it yourseff.
2/ VOIP Technology / Skype are more and more displacing regular phones. They play the same role so they need somehow to be regulated in the same manner. There is in France a declarative licence for small telcos, the so called "L33-1". I know a couple of medium sized company operating VoIP service that applied to this without any problem. So it is not like it is unbearable for companies like Microsoft.
3/ I am so amazed by comment like: Skype should cut skype in/out, or avoid physical presence in France (replace by country xxx if you want) to avoid any form of regulation.
Damn ! these regulations are non discriminatory and made for the common good. Its like on the road, if you have no rules, you end up with a dysfunctional traffic. I see in all these comment some kind of selfish, short sighted spirit, 'I want the lowest cost regardless the consequences" that is a worrying trend.
Just because someone sees the work "governement", "regulation" they jump to the roof, say its bad, andy freedom and they try to avoid it without even pondering the consequences or the actual need for regulation. I see this ultimately as some kind of subtul selfishness.
As much as I agree that freedom and freedom to innovate should be preserved and fostered, it should not be a the cost of forgetting the notion of common good.