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 ·magicjack.com
| said by n2jtx:said by majortom1029:Considering google can now be used as your phones voice mail they should follow by the same rules that att and verizon do. Then they should be entitled to all the tax breaks and USF payments that the others get which basically "socializes" the services of AT&T and Verizon already. If Google does not get any government/taxpayer handouts, why should they be subject to those taxpayer protection rules? I think USF and tax breaks go more to the point that incumbent carriers are different than VoIP because they're required (or subsidized) to provide service where, if left to "free markets" service wouldn't exist. That's the reasoning behind the poorly-written rural telco rules which created the condition for Google (unregulated) to block numbers that ATT (regulated) can't.
I think the question of whether VoIP (and Google Voice) should be regulated goes to the question of how ubiquitous they are becoming, and if left to "free market" forces will they present the kind of risks to the "national interest" that we sought to protect ourselves from when regulating incumbent carriers. Not necessarily cherry-picking service areas. But, the whole thing of network hardness, reliability, visibility by regulators.
I.e., what if GV became the hub for all telephone users, and one day it goes out of business? What effect would that have on our national interest? If all anyone knows each other by is there GV number? (The "too big to fail" problem that we're experiencing now in the financial markets after 25 years of deregulatory politics and "free markets" turned into a Theory of Everything?).
Mark |
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