Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are my own, I do not speak for Ameritech or it's alliance partners. I wrote:
One point that seems to be missed here is the very high cost of compliance with government regulations. If the internet phone people have to comply with the same regulations it will drive up their costs dramatically, and if the regulations are lifted for all, the RBOC's think they can out compete them.
Jim Bell replies:
If that is the main difference in costs, then we should abandon those regs. Another big cost is billing, which could be eliminated if usage were unmetered. In any case, I tend to agree: Make these changes, eliminate the LD/local subsidy, and the LD companies would have no problem (at least domestically) competing against Internet phone. (International may be a different story, because foreign telcos tend to be owned by countries.)
Yes compliance costs are a sore subject. Billing costs are actually very cheap,(the mainframes are on the floor above me) the difference between sending a metered bill or a flat rate bill is tiny. Really tiny (NDA). The local/long distance subsidy was eliminated at breakup, but long distance companies do have to pay to use local networks, but as competition heats up these rates are dropping and new players (competitors) join the table, Or they can build their own. ;) One of the fun turns of events might be that the threat of x-phones might lead the RBOC's to actually turn into an ISP's! We could pull this off at amazing speed. (if you can't beat them, join them!) We are after all one of the four major nodes of the Internet...... Heh heh heh....... Brian "Zazen? Well it beats sitting around on your ass all day doing nothing."