The UK telecom sheriff wants some VoIP regulation
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The UK VoIP active user population is growing fast, so fast that Ofcom, the sheriff for the UK communications industries, is thinking that it’s time to the VoIP market to get some up-to-date regulations.
This is not the first time they’re doing this, right?
No, it’s not. The first draft was published two years ago, in 2004. A time where Skype was still in its infancy and no one except early adopters knew how to make a phone call on the Internet. Since then, a bunch of phone industrials and service providers are jumping on this technology, and residential users are switching to VoIP as their primary phone service.
So how many?
According to Ofcom, the UK currently shows about 500,000 active VoIP users. By 2007, they would be up to 3 millions to make PC-to-PC phone calls and 1 million for PC-to-landlines calls. The broadband portion is around 15% of the total connected population.
The new proposition made yesterday (February 22, 2006) is available here.
What is going to change?
Until this summer, nothing. Ofcom is just making some consultations with the appropriate industries, consumer defense organizations, and other stakeholders. But the UK industry regulator wants VoIP service provider to include some necessary features such as:
- Offer free access to emergency services, and their ability to spot where you are calling them;
- Provide back-up power supply in case of power cuts;
- Capability to switch back to PSTN (traditional form) telephony connection;
- Provide directory assistance and directory listings;
- Transfer one’s phone number from provider to another one. The last one closely refers to number portability between service providers.
Any comments from the service providers?
Some of them as Peter Gradwell, managing director of the Gradwell dot com, who warmly welcomed the Ofcom’s initiative. “OFCOM is now keen to help insure VoIP users can be confident about the security of the service they use, while having good, speedy access to 999 numbers,” he said in a recent press release.
We can start talking about this here. Drop a comment.
Feb 23, 2006 | By Nuno
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