VoIP - Plan A vs Plan B

Clay Shirky's Essays: VoIP - Plan A vs Plan B
2003 was a remarkable year in the US for voice over the internet(VoIP). If you needed a label for the events of the year, "Collapse ofDenial" would be a good one -- after a long period of relativeinaction, the FCC and the state regulators are suddenly pushing hardfor a regulatory framework. The question is no longer whether voice isgoing to become an internet application, but when."When" could still be a very long time, however. The incumbent localphone companies -- Verizon, SBC, BellSouth and Qwest -- have variousdegrees of interest in VoIP, but are loathe to embrace it quickly orcompletely, because doing so means admitting to everyone --shareholders, regulators, customers -- that both monopoly control andartificially high voice revenues are going away. (The fact that thisis true does not much lessen the pain of saying so.) As a result, theywill likely try to convince regulatory agencies, both the FCC and thestates', to burden competitive VoIP firms like Vonage with additionalcosts and rules, while delaying their own offerings.Complicating this de facto Plan A, however, is the fact that VoIPisn't a service, it's just a set of protocols, meaning thatcompetitors don't have to buy into Plan A to deploy it. If Plan A is"Replace the phone system slowly and from within," Plan B is far moreradical: "Replace the phone system. Period." - More at http://www.shirky.com/writings/voip_a_b.txt
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http://www.shirky.com/writings/voip_a_b.txt
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