Re: potpourri (Re: Clearwire May Block VoIP Competitors )

["Jay R. Ashworth" <jra () baylink com>]

On Fri, Apr 01, 2005 at 09:54:40PM +0000, Paul Vixie wrote:
> jra () baylink com ("Jay R. Ashworth") writes:
> > There are, as I implied in another post, many unobvious end-to-end
> > systemic characteristics that make the PSTN the PSTN that Internet
> > Telephony isn't going to be able to fulfill for some time, if ever, due
> > to the differing fundamental engineering assumptions that underly it.
>
> i, as a user, only use the PSTN for its reach, not any of its differing
> fundamental engineering assumptions, most of which i'd challenge if i
> cared, but i don't care.  internet-as-disintermediator means clearchannel
> can't prevent podcasting, newspapers can't prevent online auctions and
> online news websites, politicians can't prevent bloggers, and sears can't
> prevent amazon... but as long as we have the FCC and NANP and an
> investment-protection policy, PSTN *can* prevent voip, and they'll use
> selective enforcement of 911 as one of the tools to do so.
>
> which is why i predict that we'll see more computers doing voice, using
> domain names rather than "phone numbers" for rendezvous.

And yet (this is drifting off topic from Internetworking into the
larger realm of networking as a whole; feel free to tune out, folks),
I'm not sure that's entirely a good thing.

Subsidy business models have long been the means by which those
functions of the commercial telecommunications industry which were not
direct retail items to end users were funded, and if all that revenue
is siphoned off, then those -- important and necessary -- functions
will have to be paid for by *someone*.

The analogy I usually use here is to "cheaper Canadian drugs".

Yeah, they're cheaper.  But they wouldn't stay that way long if a
statistically significant fraction of the US started bying their drugs
from Canadian sources, and it wouldn't have anything to do with
regulations, at all.

The declining subsidy from consumer snapshot film to the other parts of
the film photographic industry as digital cameras take over is another
good one.

Short version is: not all the things an industry does are immediately
obvious, especially to civilians, and it's good to put some thought
into what they are before blindly encouraging them to go out of
business.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra () baylink com
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