The communications market is noisy and churning. Once again, a regulator, the Ministry of Communications this time, has made a desperate and utterly hopeless attempt to stop technological progress. The latest effort was made in the international calls market, where VoIP technology is coming into use.
On Tuesday, the Ministry of Communications announced that, following complaints, it had “instructed Internet service providers (ISPs) to ensure that their systems do not carry international calls over VoIP, which bypass Israel’s authorized international calls carriers.” The ministry said this activity seriously harmed licensed international calls carriers.
Immediately following the announcement, a furor arose on Internet chat rooms with people fearing that the authorities were about block their international links. People used to calling their overseas friends and relative every day via free software like Skype were already imagining themselves the run from the law because current technology allowed them to talk for free with anyone, anywhere, with good reception, and without restriction, except for the need to go online.
In fact, the Ministry of Communications wanted to block another VoIP service altogether, and not that used by private consumers. The measure was directed at pirate companies that buy a communications line from an ISP, supposedly for data communications. These companies operate illegally, in this case transmitting phone calls using VoIP technology, using prepaid cards that the companies issue and sell, mostly to foreign workers.
The Ministry of Communications had good intentions: to fight illegal service providers that harm legitimate businesses, provide poor quality service, and pay no taxes. But senior ministry officials should have known that there is no way to fight phenomena based on technology utterly different from those they knew from the pre-broadband era.
The Ministry of Communications has apparently failed to realize that technology always, but always, precedes the regulator, and there is no way to stop progress, even ostensibly in the cause of justice. The communications market has recently undergone a revolution. Today, it is possible to transmit content by every means; the Internet is linked to the television, voice is linked to the computer, mobile devices carry Internet, and all types of information can be sent by wireless. These phenomena are possible thanks to amazing technologies that have created a situation in which possible to dichotomously separate different communications services; it is therefore impossible to keep voice communications apart from data communications.
The subject of communications regulations comes up for discussion every year at media and business conferences. The subject is raised at every meeting between companies and government authorities. Every time, the regulations go too far, are too complex and too intrusive. Instead of preserving competition, regulations harm it. But talk is one thing, and reality is something else. Israel’s communications market regulations only become more burdensome in daily business life. Regulation in the communications market, not only in Israel, should undergo a true revolution in concept, and adapt to utterly different modes of thought and action than the ones hitherto in practice, so that embarrassments like Tuesday’s announcement will not be repeated.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on December 1, 2005