From: Brian D Williams <talon57@well.com>
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 08:57:10 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: phoneco vs x-phones
Message-ID: <199608202121.OAA20223@well.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



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."