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NY Wants To Regulate Vonage
from the another-stupid-state dept
Add New York to the list of greedy states along with California, Florida and Minnesota that want to get as much money out of VoIP providers as possible by declaring them phone companies. New York has become the latest state to declare Vonage a phone company that they can now regulate. This is a backwards step that is likely to slow down the acceptance of VoIP. While it may mean that the NY state government can suck a few extra taxes out of people, it will mean slower adoption, which means slower economic growth. Even worse, they're doing this while the FCC has made it clear that they're still reviewing this issue and had told states to leave VoIP providers alone while they come up with a position at the federal level. This is merely a short-term grab at extra tax revenue.
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Vonage and The Rest Need To Unite
With Jeff Pulver living in NY I wonder if the NY PUC knows who and what they are up against. While this effort likely was fostered by one or more of the old line carriers, the next generation (i.e. this generation) like Vonage, AT&T, Skype, Packet8 and such all need to form a common lobbying effort to counter what the RBOCs are setting out to do. It's likely they will find friends with the cable operators too, and they are experienced in lobbying against the telcos.
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