We’ve moved!

You will be redirected to our new home in five seconds. If not, click here.

GigaOM Network: GigaOM | Earth2Tech | jkOnTheRun | NewTeeVee | OStatic | TheAppleBlog | WebWorkerDaily | Jobs Live Events | About | Contact

June 22, 2006

P2P VoIP just got more attractive: FCC taxing VoIP over public networks

Voip_tax I know that "free" means something can't get cheaper, but Skype, Gizmo Project and other P2P VoIP services just got relatively less expensive. The FCC voted unanimously to tax VoIP services that use public telephone networks for their traffic. If you're a customer of Vonage, CallVantage, BroadVoice, Packet8 or any of the other VoIP providers using public networks, you can expect a small monthly charge on your bill coming soon. All "donations" go to the Universal Service Fund to help subsidize rural and low-income are phone services.

If P2P VoIP is so much cheaper and more efficient than public network VoIP, whaddya say we subsidize and get some of those Linksys, Netgear and D-Link VoIP phones to those rural areas? Granted, they need hotspots or other Internet access, but aren't we supposed to be crossing the Digital Divide? See...it pays to be mobile.... ;)

-kct

Enjoy this post? Receive more jkOnTheRun content for FREE by subscribing to the RSS feed!

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451b75769e200d83561099669e2

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference P2P VoIP just got more attractive: FCC taxing VoIP over public networks:

Comments

Comments are temporarily disabled for site maintenance and will return at 6 PM PDT.

 

RSS and Mobile-Friendly View

Contributors

Kevin C. Tofel

James Kendrick

Kevin's gear   JK's gear

Awards

Microsoft MVP Awardees

CNET100 2004Weblog Awards
2004ReadersChoice 2004_BoardOfExperts
Powered by TypePad
Member since 05/2004

Copyright Notice


  • Copyright 2008 The GigaOM Network. All rights reserved. The content in this RSS feed, as well as the content presented on the web pages of the blog, is provided for your personal non-commercial use only and may not be republished in whole or in part without the express written or verbal consent of the publisher. All rights are reserved.
StatCounter