Today's outage - a case for regulation

Posts: 28 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Nov 10, 2004 Posts: 28

Folks, if Vonage were actually a LEC, this outage would result in HUGE FCC penalties.

As-is, Vonage has absolutely no accountability except to their customers... though the vast number of customer complaints indicates to me there's no accountability ANYWHERE.

And yet, the CEO of Vonage, Jeff Citron, is hard at work petitioning the FCC to keep ISPs from blocking their traffic. I'm tempted to petition the FCC to require Vonage and other Voip providers to provide a minimum degree of service reliability. I realize the Internet in general cannot be considered "reliable"... however, in cases like today, Vonage is clearly at fault.

Thoughts?

Posts: 1424

antigravityhero wrote:

Thoughts?

I think you are going to get flamed big time. Wink

No, seriously, the only regulation I can see necessary is for people to know that Voip is an alternative to POTS and not a replacement for POTS, and understand the difference. That regulation would come more from the FTC than the FCC.

The motivating factor for many people who signed up was reduced cost resulting from lack of regulation. If you want always on phone service go back to POTS. Most people today have cell phones for backup and don't need their home phone to be 100% reliable.

That being said, I no longer recommend Vonage to my friends and I would never use it for a critical business function. If someone were to come to me and ask about it I would evaluate their needs and make a recommendation based on their comfort level with the downsides.

Unregulated: You get what you pay for.
Regulated: You pay for what we give you.

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

regulating them prob isnt the answer now, BUT making sure everyone who does have a prob complains not only to Vonage but to the BBB and FTC might eventually light a fire under their *beep* to get better uptime... if and when competition also becomes more serious, there will be a necessity to provide better service.. till then, we get this.

Posts: 206

antigravityhero wrote:

Folks, if Vonage were actually a LEC, this outage would result in HUGE FCC penalties.

As-is, Vonage has absolutely no accountability except to their customers... though the vast number of customer complaints indicates to me there's no accountability ANYWHERE.

And yet, the CEO of Vonage, Jeff Citron, is hard at work petitioning the FCC to keep ISPs from blocking their traffic. I'm tempted to petition the FCC to require Vonage and other Voip providers to provide a minimum degree of service reliability. I realize the Internet in general cannot be considered "reliable"... however, in cases like today, Vonage is clearly at fault.

Thoughts?

They're accountable to their clients. If you aren't happy with their service, you aren't required to use it.

Posts: 206

antigravityhero wrote:

Folks, if Vonage were actually a LEC, this outage would result in HUGE FCC penalties.

As-is, Vonage has absolutely no accountability except to their customers... though the vast number of customer complaints indicates to me there's no accountability ANYWHERE.

And yet, the CEO of Vonage, Jeff Citron, is hard at work petitioning the FCC to keep ISPs from blocking their traffic. I'm tempted to petition the FCC to require Vonage and other Voip providers to provide a minimum degree of service reliability. I realize the Internet in general cannot be considered "reliable"... however, in cases like today, Vonage is clearly at fault.

Thoughts?

They're accountable to their clients. If you aren't happy with their service, you aren't required to use it.

Posts: 68 · Full Forum Member Joined: Jan 30, 2005 Posts: 68

Martlet wrote:

antigravityhero wrote:

Folks, if Vonage were actually a LEC, this outage would result in HUGE FCC penalties.

As-is, Vonage has absolutely no accountability except to their customers... though the vast number of customer complaints indicates to me there's no accountability ANYWHERE.

And yet, the CEO of Vonage, Jeff Citron, is hard at work petitioning the FCC to keep ISPs from blocking their traffic. I'm tempted to petition the FCC to require Vonage and other Voip providers to provide a minimum degree of service reliability. I realize the Internet in general cannot be considered "reliable"... however, in cases like today, Vonage is clearly at fault.

Thoughts?

They're accountable to their clients. If you aren't happy with their service, you aren't required to use it.

One also expects a service that is paid for to be provided.

If you pay me to provide a service to you, and I don't come through, are you just going to forget about it or will you demand some kind of accountability?

Posts: 206

Trek234 wrote:

Martlet wrote:

antigravityhero wrote:

Folks, if Vonage were actually a LEC, this outage would result in HUGE FCC penalties.

As-is, Vonage has absolutely no accountability except to their customers... though the vast number of customer complaints indicates to me there's no accountability ANYWHERE.

And yet, the CEO of Vonage, Jeff Citron, is hard at work petitioning the FCC to keep ISPs from blocking their traffic. I'm tempted to petition the FCC to require Vonage and other Voip providers to provide a minimum degree of service reliability. I realize the Internet in general cannot be considered "reliable"... however, in cases like today, Vonage is clearly at fault.

Thoughts?

They're accountable to their clients. If you aren't happy with their service, you aren't required to use it.

One also expects a service that is paid for to be provided.

If you pay me to provide a service to you, and I don't come through, are you just going to forget about it or will you demand some kind of accountability?

In my case, I'll just forget about it. Here's why:

I work for a CLEC. We have outages at times. Some are our fault. Some aren't. We credit the customer for the time lost.

So far, I've lost about 2 hours. That means Vonage owes me 5 cents for the time I've lost. That's crap money. What I have to decide if the savings are enough to offset the service. For me they are, since I rarely use it. For you they may not be.

I could save a lot of money by switching to dial-up also, but in that example the service isn't worth the savings.

It's all relative. No one is making me choose either service.

Posts: 1424 · Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 3:20 pm Post subject:

Quote:

If you pay me to provide a service to you, and I don't come through, are you just going to forget about it or will you demand some kind of accountability?

Short of having a contract which specifically spells out availability you are unlikely to win this argument in any court.

Any complex system is going to have downtime. A court is going to look and see if this is a reasonable amount of downtime over a long period. Since Vonage works for a majority of its customers, most of the time, you are getting what you paid for.

I bet that Vonage specifically protects themselves from damages arising from outages in their terms of service. (I can't check now because the site is down.)

Posts: 68 · Full Forum Member Joined: Jan 30, 2005 Posts: 68

scerruti wrote:

Quote:

If you pay me to provide a service to you, and I don't come through, are you just going to forget about it or will you demand some kind of accountability?

Short of having a contract which specifically spells out availability you are unlikely to win this argument in any court.

Any complex system is going to have downtime. A court is going to look and see if this is a reasonable amount of downtime over a long period. Since Vonage works for a majority of its customers, most of the time, you are getting what you paid for.

I bet that Vonage specifically protects themselves from damages arising from outages in their terms of service. (I can't check now because the site is down.)

Never said Vonage didn't protect themselves in it's terms of service. However, the principle of the matter is that if you pay for a service you expect it to be done right.

Posts: 1424 · Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 3:34 pm Post subject:

Of course, comments like this don't help:

Quote:

Vonage customers should understand that their SIP-based Voip service is as secure and has the same QoS as their PSTN service," said Michael DeBiase, director, network operations, Vonage. "Such a viable solution allows us to bring our services to market by addressing security, peering and other technical issues that have historically slowed widespread customer acceptance of Voip.

http://www.vonage.com/corporate/press_index.html?PR=2001_07_11_0

emphasis mine

On another note: Leave it to the director of operations to explain what "customers should understand" using terms that their customers probably never use.