Vonage Victorious in Port Blocking Case

Posts: 2252

Vonage Victorious in Port Blocking Case

http://www.vonage-forum.com/article1697.html

Lets discuss

Posts: 81 · Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2005 7:44 pm Post subject:

Quote:

The ruling concluded that Madison River is required to make a voluntary payment to the United States Treasury in the amount of fifteen thousand dollars ($15,000.00).

required to make a voluntary payment? How exactly does that work lol.

In all seriousness though... weeee, that's good news.

Posts: 482 · Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2005 7:58 pm Post subject:

Yeah I thought "voluntary" was funny, too. Kind of like I "voluntarily" pay the taxes that never even make it to my paycheck just so that I don't go to prison.

I wonder if there's a pattern: ISPs blocking traffic to hinder Voip, local telcos blocking access to e911 to hinder Voip, landline providers sitting on LNP transfers, etc.?

I'm really curious to hear from guys like Martlet, rebus, DentalRep, otaku et al. who criticize goverment regulation any time 911 is mentioned, but seem to selectively praise regulation when it suits their ends, like asking for help with the LNP transfers or forcing their ISP to unblock certain types of traffic. After all, Madison River's customers could have gone back to POTS or switched to another ISP. "No one was holding a gun to their head" as is often stated here to anyone concerned that consumers currently have no choice in whether they can access 911 over Voip.

Personally I think that's fantastic news. It's good to see the government taking reasonable steps to promote emerging technologies and provide consumers with more choices. I think Michael Powell has done a great job--I wish he wasn't stepping down.

Posts: 318 · Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2005 9:00 pm Post subject:

Quote:

I'm really curious to hear from guys like Martlet, rebus, DentalRep, otaku et al. who criticize goverment regulation any time 911 is mentioned, but seem to selectively praise regulation when it suits their ends, like asking for help with the LNP transfers or forcing their ISP to unblock certain types of traffic. After all, Madison River's customers could have gone back to POTS or switched to another ISP. "No one was holding a gun to their head" as is often stated here to anyone concerned that consumers currently have no choice in whether they can access 911 over Voip.

I just don't want to pay an extra fee for E911 service. One of the great things about Vonage is there are two charges: Service and Federal Excise Tax. I wish I didn't have to pay the tax Smile

That's a bit unrealistic...

But there are anti-competition laws on the book to prevent companies from stronghanding competitors. Blocking the ports is obviously sabotaging companies like Vonage.

But, personally, I am really wary of any Internet regulation. I have never thought the government should pass one Internet-related law, even the Spam Act (which has worked wonderfully, hasn't it? Smile

). And, coming from that POV, I can almost understand cable companies blocking certain ports...

I don't think I've come out publicly on the forum for either view, but I think I'd lean towards the anti-competition side.

Posts: 29 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Mar 03, 2005 Posts: 29

wow the FCC finally gets something right!

Posts: 1424 · Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 11:06 am Post subject:

Vonage must have great big stones to go in and force a regulated carrier to open ports for Voip traffic while blocking Voip traffic from fwd.pulver.net.

http://www.vonage-forum.com/ftopic1391.html

Posts: 482 · Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 12:41 pm Post subject:

The difference being that Madison River is a regulated, and Vonage is not.

Posts: 1424 · Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 2:35 pm Post subject:

Vonage's decision to block the ports is as harmful to the development of Internet based telephony as Madison Rivers', if not more so.

Madison Rivers' decision affected subscribers in one area. Competitors could enter that area to provide service.

Vonage's decision to deny peering has the potential to break the telephone system into a vast array of unconnected islands. If Vonage has issues with open peering then they need to handle it with internal systems.

Posts: 318 · Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 2:44 pm Post subject:

from the link you cited:

Quote:

Old message dated Nov 8th 2004:
According to a post by Jim Toga of FWD in the FWD mailing list, Vonage peering is currently broken owing to changes in Vonage servers. He says Vonage is trying to have it working again by the end of the month.

It does not appear Vonage did anything on purpose. In fact, according to that poster, Vonage was working to fix this at the time.

Posts: 1424 · Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 3:14 pm Post subject:

That quote saying up in a month was four months ago. Vonage has also been quoted saying it should down peering for fraud reasons.

Why peering can be bad:

1) SIP addresses are not on the Do Not Call registry
2) I can send recorded messages over SIP faster than realtime
3) Voip makes telemarketing cheaper

of more relevance to this group:

I can use the web to set up call forwarding to a number I want to call. I could then use any softphone to call myself and get connected to that call.

In the extreme case I can use an Asterix type server and a DTMF generation system to automatically transfer my calls (rather than forward them). If the system was not configured correctly I could have dozens (if not hundreds?) of people using my unlimited Vonage account for POTS access. I could even extend the DTMF system to allow incoming calls to a number of subscribers by asking the caller to enter an extension.

Vonage could handle the peering situation using Acceptable Use Policies.

AUPs could prevent an account holder from using his line as I described. Vonage could cancel service for anyone in violation of the AUP. Such an AUP might restrict the number of simultaneous POTS lines in use by an account.

AUPs on peering agreements could also restrict telemarketing to white listed customers with built in penalties. This would force the peers to enact AUPs that would pass the penalties on to their subscribers.

In the vacuum of authoritative information about why peering has been closed to FWD, we can not know where the real fault lies. But when something stops working that has such a broad range of potential downsides for the bottom line, you have to suspect that the problem is more political than technical.