North American Network Operators Group
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Re: US slaps fine on company blocking VoIP

  • From: Bill Nash
  • Date: Mon Mar 07 12:06:01 2005 
On Mon, 7 Mar 2005, Adi Linden wrote:


If VOIP doesn't run on your network because you've oversold your capacity,
no amount of QoS is going to put the quality back into your service.
People will find better ISPs. If you deliberately set QoS to favor your
services over a competitor, whom your customers are also paying for
service, you'll be staring down prosecutors, at some point. It's
anti-competitive behavior, as you're taking deliberate actions to degrade
the service of a competitor, simply because you can.

Let's say I sell a premium VoIP offering for an additional fee on my
network. I apply QoS to deliver my VoIP offering to my customers but as a
result all other VoIP service is literally useless during heavy use
times you'd consider this anti-competitive behavior?
Applying QoS to your VOIP traffic at the expense of *all* other traffic would be edging against a gray area. Applying QoS to competitive VOIP traffic specifically to improve the quality of your service at the expense of theirs is likely to be a problem. Again, I am not a lawyer. I would strongly suggest consulting one if this is a serious concern.

The Internet is not regulated because operators tend to be effective at self policing. Engaging in these kinds of practices is asking for regulation.

- billn