The Missouri Communications Alliance supports the concept of this legislation.
A more stringent regulatory environment for VoIP erects barriers to entry for new competitors, stifling competition.
Less regulation of VoIP service is beneficial for consumers:
More competition
As a result of VoIP technological advances, VoIP providers and start-ups are charging into the Internet voice market at unprecedented rates. VoIP is enabling a host of new non-traditional competitors to enter the voice market which was once the sole purview of a incumbent telephone company. Software, hardware, networking gear companies and innovators in their basements are now able to program new voice applications and become global voice providers with the reach of the global Internet.
Lower prices
To respond to growing VoIP Competition, the New York Times reports the traditional Bell operating companies have been strategically dropping the price of traditional phone service. In New York, Verizon recently sent letters to customers offering a calling plan that includes unlimited phone service for $35 a month, instead of $60, a 42 percent cut. For people signing up for service through its Web site, AT&T now offers unlimited local and long distance service for $40, down from $50 a year ago. (NY Times, Internet Calling Pressures Bells to Lower Rates, July 3, 2006)
More options
For consumers, the benefits of VoIP technology are profound. With a broadband connection, consumers will be able to choose directly the type of services and the specific provider they want to deliver it independent of the incumbent broadband provider, and regardless of the type of services the incumbent has to offer.
VoIP gives competitors alternative routes to the subscriber – phones are no longer tied to phone lines. VoIP services can be reached over Cable, Fixed wireless, 3G wireless, Broadband over Power Line, Wi-Fi, Wi-Max, and even satellite broadband networks in the most remote locations.
Inhibiting competition in Missouri’s VoIP market through increased regulation would be detrimental to increasing broadband build-out in rural areas of the state, and hamper opportunity for smaller firms to provide access and choice in rural communities.
Nowhere is VoIP opportunity as profound as it is in rural America. It can bring jobs, deliver new economic opportunities, and reconnect distant families. This transformation will enable consumers to bridge the distance between urban and rural America, people to do things never before thought possible, rural telecom companies to extend broadband more affordably, businesses to transform the way they do business, rural communities to connect to a new world of remote job opportunities, and rural economies to become an engine for higher paying information age jobs.
VoIP: Helping Rural Providers Become More Profitable:
Rural Texas Co-op Uses VoIP to Ring Up Savings and Advanced Features. Coleman County Telephone Cooperative (CCTC) in rural Texas was able to use VoIP together with other technologies to deliver cutting services to its rural subscribers and put the company on a more profitable footing. Using VoIP, CCTCdeliver a profitable Triple Play of next-generation services — voice, video and data. Instead of getting a month for traditional voice service, CCTC’s average monthly subscriber rate is predicted to reach $57 voice, $92 for voice and data, over $100 for all three.
Rural Oklahoma Phone Company With Declining Revenues Uses VoIP to Create a More Profitable Cross Telephone in rural Okalahoma faced declining subscriber revenue. But it embraced VoIP and a voice, video and data over a converged IP network. This end-to-end IP solution enabled Cross Telephone new advanced services, increasing the average subscriber rate from $45 per month for local telephony calls) to approximately $105 per month to include VoIP, digital TV, and high-speed Internet access.
“Broadband voice (also known as Voice Over Internet Protocol or VoIP) is at a watershed moment and must be dealt with through clear national standards. Subjecting it to individual state jurisdictions is the wrong approach, and one that would hamper investment and slow its deployment to consumers.”
— U.S. Senator John Sununu (New Hampshire)
