I totally agree with this. But remember the courts do as they please. A case in point. A very religious married couple in Ann Arbor, Michigan owned a apartment building. Because of their religious beliefs, chose not to rent to un-married persons. Now this was private property and their religious beliefs told them not to, but the courts ruled that they were in violation of the law. So in essence the court said, your right to do as you wish with you private property and to follow your religious teaching do not exists. What takes precedent, the Constitution or laws made by Congress? I was taught that nothing supersedes the Constitution yet the courts do it all the time.
See this a misconception that the VoIP providers do not have to follow some regulations. What they want to insure is that they do not have to collect a bunch of crap taxes and fees per line. In my opinion none of the companies should be forced to do this. But these providers do pay into these. For the lines that they install to terminate to they are paying E911, sales tax and into the universal service fund. Just not for the customer access side. Why? because the law requires these fees based on a telephone line, not access to making telephone calls.
Your telecom director is correct and wrong. Yes, it cost money for the internet access, but less then having the telephone lines. The cost to set this up in a business environment is very high. The Cisco telephones alone cost about $150.00 each from what I understand. Then of course the routers and other items cost. For business they have to decide the payback. If they are only being billed a few hundred dollars a month the hardware cost alone could make it unwise. But if you company is being bill a few thousand a month I would recommend that it be looked at. If the payback is less then a year or two they should go with VoIP. I would even go as far as to say, borrow to do it.
VoIP maybe a novelty to you, but for my employer it is what we are doing. Billions of minuets per month are going across our VoIP network and we are adding more everyday. So much so that we have removed good old fashion TDM switches and plan to have them all gone as soon as we can. VoIP is no more a novelty today then the internet. There are some that have no access or desire for the internet and see it as a novelty, the opposite is true for VoIP. Within the next 5 to 10 years, other then the slow pokes at the LECs no one will have TDM switches in their networks.
Our Esteemed Moderator posted:
Did you notice as well, Pat that all along we have been talking about a ISP doing this. It wasn't, it was a regulated telephone company that did it. So all the brew-ha-ha about ISPs wanting freedom from regulation had nothing to do with it after all.
Chip Cryderman