TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Internet Pioneer: VoIP is NOT Telephony

Internet Pioneer: VoIP is NOT Telephony

Jack Decker (jack-yahoogroups@withheld_on_request)
Fri, 15 Apr 2005 18:28:16 -0400

http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=354

4/15/2005
Internet pioneer: VoIP is NOT telephony
-Posted by Russell Shaw @ 2:32 am

My colleague Renai LeMay at ZDNet Australia has just had the
professional privilege of hearing remarks by one of the technology
world's smartest men.

Vint Cerf. The Vint Cerf that developed the TCP/IP protocol that makes
the Internet work. And more than 30 years after that singular (hey, I
just realized how Cingular got its name) feat of innovation, there
Cerf was yesterday, addressing an Internet governance forum in Sydney.

Vint Cerf does not want VoIP to be regulated. His fear, though -- one
that I share, is because VoIP "looks like telephony," regulatory
bodies all over the world will knee-jerk assume that it needs to be
governed.

"My concern here is the fact that VoIP looks like, and sounds like
telephony," Cerf told the group. "This is horribly misleading. To leap
to that conclusion is extremely dangerous. VoIP is really just another
application on the Internet. Nothing special about it."

Oh, boy. This is a fitting statement for April 15, but how I wish that
revenue-hungry state and local governments in the U.S. got it. But
they haven't. Here in the U.S., too many jurisdictions are going to
keep longingly looking at VoIP as a cash cow -- and will keep trying
to figure out ways to glean money from it.

The above is from:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=354

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