I admit it: I don't bother keeping a fax line in my office. There's no point, really; most people have figured out how to send email, and if they need to send a scan of a document they send the scan via email. For the technically-challenged, I use a service located in Iowa that receives the fax for me and forwards it via email. And I frankly don't know how I'd send a fax if I had to send one this morning; I'd probably have to head down to the storage room and dig out a fax machine.
This might make me an enlightened consumer, but according to this article I might be a parasite, since I'm not paying anything for the incoming fax number. Worse yet, I'm participating in a "scam" since my service provider is taking advantage of odd telecommunications regulations to extract hefty payments from AT&T and other service providers. The very popular "Freeconference.com" service was recently blocked by Cingular and Qwest; what seemed at first glance to be an anti-competitive move by two giant service providers might actually have some moral justification as can be seen by the quote from the providers. Given the arrogant history of the past incarnations of AT&T, I have to admit that it sounds to me as if AT&T's real complaint is that AT&T feels these particular calls aren't as profitable as they'd like.
In some sense this is all re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic; just like email, telephone calls are destined to be free. On the other hand, the legacy telcos are attempting to do everything they can to strangle the competition, as seen by Verizon's attempt to destroy Internet pioneer Vonage. If they can cut the oxygen off for long enough, they can do the same thing they did with DSL-based Internet service: destroy the pioneers and steal their turf, and then create regulatory barriers to new entrants. This would allow the legacy carriers an opportunity to extend their current business model — government-mandated monopoly — to the realm of Internet telephony. Using their monopoly power to prevent traffic they don't like over their telephone networks helps establish a precedent to seize control of other traffic they don't like — such as Internet traffic.
Topics: · business · government · telecommunications
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