Vonage Complaining Of VoIP 'Blocking'
advancedippipeline.com
February 14, 2005
By Paul Kapustka
(ntop partners with cable msos; vonage and packet8 piggyback on their networks ...; compete)
Company has complained to the FCC that competing service providers are "blocking" its Voice over IP service.
BOULDER, Colo. -- Leading Voice over IP service provider Vonage Holdings has complained to the Federal Communications Commission that competitors are blocking the use of its service, according to FCC staffers and others close to the company.
In a speech during Sunday's Silicon Flatirons conference here, Stanford law professor Larry Lessing said that Vonage has been telling the FCC that other service providers are hampering Vonage's VoIP service by "blocking" it from reaching certain SIP addresses for end-user devices. Reports of other providers using networking techniques to block competitors' VoIP services have surfaced before, but none have involved Vonage or major U.S. service providers.
Robert Pepper, the FCC's chief of policy development, was at the Silicon Flatirons conference and confirmed that Vonage had complained to the FCC about blocking issues, but did not comment further. Vonage representatives did not respond to requests for comments Sunday.
Since new sophisticated network-management tools allow service providers to determine the types of traffic flowing across their networks, the possibility exists that certain types of traffic -- such as Vonage's VoIP services -- could be "blocked" or otherwise degraded.
And since there is no current law or regulation prohibiting such techniques, it's unclear what Vonage's complaints to the FCC might accomplish. But Lessig's claims gave other speakers at Sunday's program more fuel for the telecom regulation reform debate, with most decrying any such packet-based discrimination.
"If Vonage is toast because the ports are blocked, that's not good," said Phil Weiser, associate professor of law and telecommunications at the University of Colorado, the host of the Silicon Flatirons Telecommunications Program.
MCI executive and Internet co-founder Vint Cerf agreed, saying it was bad for everyone if service providers suddenly started discriminating against traffic types by competitive parameters.
"The presumption [of the Internet] is that you're fully connected," Cerf said. Any attempts to block certain application types or types of content, he said, "will destroy the utility of the Net." |
