According to a letter to the editor in MinnPost, Representative Tim Sanders says…
Minnesota had a real opportunity to bring our telecommunications regulatory structure into the 21st century this session by joining 34 other states in saying no to state-specific regulation of voice-over-Internet protocol services (“VoIP”) and other IP-enabled services. I was proud to author the original legislation (HF 776) and join with Sen. Dan Sparks (SF 895) in a bipartisan effort to help spur more telecom investment in the state.
This VoIP-IP legislation, which had bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate, made its way into the final deliberations of the Supplemental Budget Bill that included $35 million for the state’s broadband fund. Unfortunately, however, because of Gov. Mark Dayton’s adamant and unfounded opposition, those provisions were removed from the Supplemental Budget Bill on the last day of the recently concluded legislative session. It’s ironic that while the Dayton administration continues to call for more funding for the state broadband fund, it takes a “ regulate first” approach to the kinds of services that foster more broadband deployment and bring innovation to industry and consumers alike. It is the exact same VoIP service that the governor, my colleagues in the Legislature, and other members of the state government currently enjoy in their own offices.
I’m impressed that a pretty wonky optic has spurred some discussion in the comments. Here are a few counterpoints (that relate to the issue)…
VoIP is a land line in the sense that as an internet service it would use either existing cable or phone lines. However, somebody still has to build and maintain those lines and infrastructure which is why the public utility model worked so well for establishing traditional phone service in the first place. So yeah, if everyone is using Comcast or Centurylink lines but not enough people are paying Centurylink or Comcast to use those lines eventually the infrastructure eventually degrades.
Most if not all of the State Government offices actually switched to VoIP a few years ago. While it has worked well by and large there have been some notable outages and glitches that simply didn’t happen with traditional land lines.
And…
But if you grew up during a time when ‘dial tone’ was the most reliable technology in the world, and note how much less reliable internet service is today, then you might find continued regulation of VOIP services to be just the thing you want to ensure that industry is held to a high standard for a technology that is likely going to eventually be relied upon for emergency services (via VOIP 911 calls), and provides much greater opportunity for the harvesting of personal information than Plain Old Telephone Services (POTS) ever did.
And…
The AARP is rightly against bills like this, and against eliminating land lines that do such lovely things like provide fantastic sound and automatically tell the 911 operator where you’re making your call from (down to the apartment number!). There are significant ways in which the internet is more complicated, more unstable, more expensive, has more built-in obsolescence and fewer helpful services than traditional phones.