Thursday, June 30, 2005

Cable sharing, Port Blocking and E911 

Tom Keating has an interesting point regarding the discussion on port blocking and E911:
According to a Forbes article, the recent Supreme Court Ruling against a small Internet service provider called Brand X Internet will open the door to VoIP blocking. The Supreme Court ruled that cable operators don't need to share their broadband access lines with other businesses. Thus, the Forbes article "theorizes" that this will lead to VoIP port blocking by the cable broadband providers by stating, "That's good news for big cable companies but could be trouble for voice-over-Internet Protocol providers like Vonage, which sell digital phone service."
According to Tom this may not happen because:
All it takes is one 911 call to fail due to cable companies performing port blocking and the million dollar lawsuit that will ensue will keep the cable companies in line. The liability is just to great. The FCC will step in and prevent this from happening. If not the FCC then certainly Congress will step in if rampant port blocking were to occur.

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