A column in Toronto Star, September 27th issue (via Pulver) gives a summary of the recent hearing conducted by CRTC. The following snippet caught my attention:
The final view that stood out was the one taken by Telus Corp., Canada's second-largest phone company and the incumbent in Alberta and British Columbia.
Telus stressed that a distinction should be made between a VoIP service that is sold by a telco as part of their high-speed Internet service, versus what it calls an "access-independent" VoIP service, which is essentially a software application that can ride over any high-speed connection from any service provider from Canada or around the world. …
She seemed to catch the attention of the commissioners on the hearing panel. After Telus made its presentation, many of the questions asked of other companies were directed at this concept of access-independent VoIP.
"When you're reasonable, people tend to listen to you," said one CRTC insider.
Now this is what I said back in April:
PSTN regulations depend upon the classification of the service provider – ILEC, CLEC and resellers. The classification will be carried over. So an ILEC in PSTN will be an ILEC when they offer VoIP in their own territory. This is at odds with their stated goal. A proper analogy will be to decide the classification based on who owns the broadband access facility. So an ILEC for VoIP will be one who owns the access facility and offers the service. For example, Verizon will be an ILEC when they offer their service to their DSL customer; but will be a CLEC when they offer VoIP service to a Comcast customer, even though these two customers happen to be in the same geographical area where Verizon is an ILEC PSTN service provider. I firmly believe that facilities owner will have an advantage; hence the bias against them.
Posted by aswath at September 27, 2004 11:42 AM