Reviews:
 ·magicjack.com
| reply to iansltx
Re: MagicTalk isn't "this week" said by iansltx:For example, if there was a list of providers who *could* call to a particular rural exchange without being blocked, an entrepreneur in one of those blocked areas could buy a PRI (primary rate interface, 23 voice trunks to the phone company) and a T1 (enough internet bandwidth to carry those voice trunks), then sell minutes to that exchange out on the open market. Are you serious? Someone's going to do all that when, just as quickly as the area was blocked by "free market" motives, it becomes unblocked (perhaps due to a revenue-sharing agreement, where Dan gets some of the vig from traffic pumping)? |
|
|
|
iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 Reviews:
 ·Verizon Online DSL
 ·Comcast
| No one has ever made the accusation that MJ does traffic pumping schemes, other than pricing their termination rates above market rates for full SIP systems. That's not how they operate, and to speculate on that would be like speculating that Apple is going into the business of spying on its customers with built-in cameras on its computers. IOW, baseless.
You know what backs up my assertion that your assumption about MJ participating in a revenue share is baseless? The fact that MJ's conference line is actually priced LOWER on termination rates than its standard subscriber numbers...LOWER! |
|
Reviews:
·magicjack.com
1 edit | said by iansltx:You know what backs up my assertion that your assumption about MJ participating in a revenue share is baseless? You completely dodged my point: nobody in a rural area would pay for the kind of infrastructure you mentioned if the rural exchange could be unblocked just as capriciously as it was blocked. (I.e., your suggested alternative was pointless.).
MJ's potential to participate in traffic pumping? Here's what I think:
When MJ blocked the traffic-pumped conference call services, Dan said he was trying to negotiate an agreement. It could have included direct revenue sharing. We don't know.
But, what we do know is that, even if it was just a lower termination fee, he would have been engaging in indirect revenue sharing. Validating the "free" conference call services. Making them available to MJ customers (as an additional feature to compete against others, like Google who blocked them). And, providing that service which would have been, by definition, funded by other service providers(!).
So, if you limit "revenue sharing" to a very contrived view of physical dollars entering Dan's pocket, you can say there was no chance he would have shared revenue.
But, if you define it as an actual gain for MagicJack, derived through the traffic-pumped revenue of other service providers, it shares the same quality as dollars entering Dan's pocket.
The bottom line was: Dan didn't mind doing business with traffic pumpers. He just wanted to do it at a "good price."
That's why I suggested back then that, once he got a taste of that cost-savings effort (without regard to ethics), we'd see it with entire rural exchanges.
Nine months later... entire rural exchanges are being blocked. |
|
iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 Reviews:
·Verizon Online DSL
·Comcast
| You're playing both sides of the argument here. On the one hand you're saying that nobody should be allowed to block outbound calls to any number on the US PSTN (where does it stop?!?), but on the other you're saying that not blocking numbers is an enormous competitive advantage for MagicJack because they're able to compete away customers from other providers, and thus should not be tolerated. ?!?
Competition is about delivering either better service, better pricing or both to a customer, and getting that customer as a result. I think that MagicJack should lose ALL of its customers who want to call rural exchanges to some other company. That company will have a financial incentive (those new customers) to keep rural calling open. That's that! |
|
iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 Reviews:
·Verizon Online DSL
·Comcast
| reply to amigo_boy
As for your "well they could overturn the block at any time" mentality as a reason for not investing in infrastructure, Time Warner Cable could at any time lower their business internet rates by $40 per month on the entry level and put the local WISP out of all of its in-twn business subscribers that are paying attention to what's going on. Three years later, nothing has happened to TWC's business internet rates. Just because a company *can* take your competitive advantage away doesn't mean that they will.
Additionally, my technical scenario assumes that your hypothetical cost cutting across the board has happened, and that nobody is willing to offer reasonably priced outbound long distance to a given region at all. Which is a far cry from what's happening today. |
|
Reviews:
·magicjack.com
| reply to iansltx
said by iansltx:You're playing both sides of the argument here. On the one hand you're saying that nobody should be allowed to block outbound calls to any number on the US PSTN (where does it stop?!?), but on the other you're saying that not blocking numbers is an enormous competitive advantage for MagicJack because they're able to compete away customers from other providers, and thus should not be tolerated. ?!? I'm sorry. You're going to have to start quoting the material you're replying to.
Where did I say not blocking is a competitive advantage to magicJack? I thought I said the exact opposite.
said by iansltx:Competition is about delivering either better service, better pricing or both to a customer, and getting that customer as a result. Competition doesn't exist in a vacuum. We socialize markets all the time. The SEC, FDIC, food- and drug-quality laws, building codes and zoning laws, etc. The list is truly endless. Simply because we have a larger goal for social good than pure "competition."
MagicJack was making a very good profit before blocking rural areas. |
|
Reviews:
·magicjack.com
1 edit | reply to iansltx
said by iansltx:As for your "well they could overturn the block at any time" mentality as a reason for not investing in infrastructure, Time Warner Cable could ... What they could do, and what they really do are two different things. We actually have an example of capriciousness, in defiance of regulation.
The fact remains that rural areas were protected from the kind of raw, pure, "free market" vagueries that would lead to nobody having a profit motive to serve them.
If a rural exchange can be blocked arbitrarily, they can be unblocked just as arbitrarily. Who is going to invest in the infrastructure you suggested under such conditions?
The likely result is that the rural exchange would raise rates on rural residents to make up for the lost subsidization. The very thing the law was intended to minimize.
Which leads us back to the primary question of whether MJ should be able to evade this social prerogative without it going through the standard policy-making process. All in the interest of "more profits."
And, secondarily, whether "more profits" should be the only factor dictating telecommunications regulation.
We've already established the fact that we don't live by that race-to-the-bottom rule consistently. For example, magicJack uses the low-consuming customers to subsidize the high-consuming. |
|
iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 Reviews:
·Verizon Online DSL
·Comcast
| In the beginning, there was AT&T. Then rural telcos got a hand up from the federal government to wire areas that AT&T wasn't touching. Those same areas are receiving subsidies to the tune of $40 per subscriber per month these days. A whole other can of worms, to say the least.
Then again, I've never been much for socialized products "for the good of the community." I have to check to see whether telephone cooperatives were started with, and only with, the aid of USF funding, but u've got to decide what's a utility (landline phone? cheap unlimited phone service for less than $45 per month? 100M symmetric broadband?) in this day and age and what isn't.
Also, you know what? FCC fines are a slap on the wrist compared to mass customer defections. Figure out how to spin an anti-MagicJack media campaign successfully and you'll get MagicJack and other providers to turn tail more quickly because...wait for it...less customers are using their service. |
|
Reviews:
·magicjack.com
| said by iansltx:Then again, I've never been much for socialized products "for the good of the community." Oh, but I bet you are. It just depends on whether you feel it benefits you.
I doubt you'd give your neighbor a pass on zoning laws when she converts her house into a late-night biker bar. Just because, she needs to be more "competitive." Or, because she keeps her prices low and simply can't afford to open a biker bar where society requires them to be located. 
said by iansltx:but u've got to decide what's a utility (landline phone? cheap unlimited phone service for less than $45 per month? 100M symmetric broadband?) in this day and age and what isn't. I don't have to decide.
Congress and the FCC have to. Until then, I believe MJ is flagrantly ignoring a law in order to give itself a competitive advantage at the expense of more ethical competitors.
said by iansltx:FCC fines are a slap on the wrist compared to mass customer defections. Figure out how to spin an anti-MagicJack media campaign successfully and you'll get MagicJack and other providers to turn tail more quickly because...wait for it...less customers are using their service. Why should it be an either/or proposition.
The best thing people can do is file an FCC complaint here. Hopefully the FCC will stop magicJack's practice. And/or, address the topic of modernizing the law.
Those would both be wins. I'm not too concerned with an FCC fine. |
|
iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 Reviews:
·Verizon Online DSL
·Comcast
| So...how is the FCC going to stop MagicJack, pray tell?
As for zoning laws, that's not a socialized product that subsidizes one market in favor of another.
As for other socialized goods, if certain socialized services were disbanded and taxes cut as a result, I would be better off, despite being the beneficiary of a number of those programs. Then again, I live outside town in a community (both local and on a state level...central TX) that favors less regulation over more, partly because regulations tend to be outpaced by the industry to which they originally apply. |
|
Reviews:
·magicjack.com
| said by iansltx:So...how is the FCC going to stop MagicJack, pray tell? You said I wanted MJ to be fined. I want them to follow the law and not give themselves a competitive advantage. If that involves a fine (or, daily fines), that's ok with me. But, "punishment" isn't my goal.
said by iansltx:As for zoning laws, that's not a socialized product that subsidizes one market in favor of another. See what I mean? You really do like government subsidization. You just don't want to call it what it is. Makes the whole problem go away, right? 
In a truly "free market" your neighbor would have a perfect property right, to dispose of their property in any manner they chose. It would be your personal responsibility to purchase sufficient property to protect yourself from your neighbor's choices.
Zoning laws relieve you of your personal responsibility. Essentially shifting your burden to your neighbor. Extending your property rights onto your neighbor's property. Limiting how your neighbor may dispose of her property, to only those things that are in your interest.
said by iansltx:As for other socialized goods, if certain socialized services were disbanded and taxes cut as a result, I would be better off, despite being the beneficiary of a number of those programs. People always say that. But, you don't see them pulling their money out of 401K programs, and investing their money in unregulated banks and investments. |
|
iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 Reviews:
·Verizon Online DSL
·Comcast
| 401K? What 01K? You mean the 401K that recently tanked with the stock market?
Also, zoning is agreed upon at the municipal level. As government gets farther from the governed, efficiency wanes.
Also, I'm not even sure that zoning laws apply to me. I'm outside city limits. Then again, I haven't built a biker bar on my land, and neither has anyone nearby. |
|
Reviews:
·magicjack.com
1 edit | said by iansltx:401K? What 01K? You mean the 401K that recently tanked with the stock market? If you think it would be better without regulation, you're free to invest in unregulated schemes.
said by iansltx:Also, zoning is agreed upon at the municipal level. As government gets farther from the governed, efficiency wanes. So, you're ok with government subsidization if it's agreed to. And, at agreed to locally.
Of course, it's not always "agreed to" universally. That's why it requires a law instead of the individual's charitable nature. People, as you're exhibiting, individual's are selectively charitable.
Usually, depending on whether they perceive they're the beneficiaries of the "charity." Or, how "efficient" the charity is.
said by iansltx:Also, I'm not even sure that zoning laws apply to me. I'm outside city limits. Then again, I haven't built a biker bar on my land, and neither has anyone nearby. Well, if it's not a problem for you, it must not be for anyone else. That's convenient. |
|
