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A Call to Action by the VON Coalition
Although I support and wish them luck, a call to action to remove VoIP barriers internationally is a daunting task.
In Jeff Pulver's blog dated December 15th, 2006, I quote my comment dated December 18th, 2006:
"Jeff [Pulver], I wish you and the VON Coalition good luck.
However it may be an up hill battle that is based on each countries political and bureaucratic process. Let’s not forget that the incumbents grew out of the PT&Ts (Post Telephone & Telegraph) and they would act in the best interest of a country and not the market.
History has many examples of how this played out, remember the proprietary signaling protocols across international boundaries, remember that some PT&Ts were successful in blocking entire NPAs in an effort to stop international toll bypass.
Countries like India have embraced VoIP as a technology enabler to grow their share of the outsource call center market, but stop short of allowing VoIP to originating or terminating within their PSTN.
Other countries like China have adopted a policy of licensing and setting the cost at (un)reasonable level – estimates as high as $2M US.
You may want to take the India policy as an example of allowing VoIP to enable a market. And replay this to countries like Malaysia which are up and coming outsourcing countries – as a start."Take a look at a Global view VoIP regulations as developed by the Global IP Alliance.
Typically, countries have taken an open market approach to spur innovation, a middle ground approach to control innovation and a “not in my back yard” approach to stifle innovation.
A PT&T approach of stifling innovation is a near sighted perspective to protect tax revenue and the incumbent’s control – far a market perspective the market will move those calls via VoIP to countries that are either in the open market or middle ground approach.
For example, US and Europe are open market countries, India is a middle ground country, and China is “not in my back yard” country.
So how can you move China into the middle ground?
I think we should use India’s logic, in providing cost effective communications (VoIP inbound/outbound) to support outsourcing while leveraging low cost labor.