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One thousandth of a second. It is often associated with the access speed of hard drives.
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Millisecond - On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 05:08:21 -04 00 Jack "Mr. VoIP News" Decker wrote,fg> So what's to complain about? But then John got a reply from a Mr. News, who so loves VoIP that he apparently took it as his first name: Now Fred, that was a dumb comment to make. It's obvious that "VoIP News" isn't the name of a person.No! You're kidding! Pat has already explained how he mungess the message headers at my request, again as an anti-spam measure.Of course headers are munged. But he was running your posts with noname, even though you were sometimes using the first person. A littleattempt at humor may have gone whoosh? But basically, here is where I'm coming from: I do not feel that under any circumstances should VoIP be automatically assumed to be the same as traditional wireline telephony. Indeed, in some respects it shares more characteristics with cellular or wireless telephony than with wireline telephony, but in reality it's something totally new. Cellular telephony connects to the PSTN, yet it does not get hit with exactly the same taxes and regulations that are imposed on wireline phones. VoIP shouldn't either.Cellular gets hit with most of them. It's under interstatejurisdiction, so maybe those Michigan state-jurisdiction ones miss it,but it pays into USF, telecom excise, etc. It is regulated astelecom. Now, I'm sorry for all you socialists out there, but I think it is high time that the Universal Service Fund and similar corporate subsidies went away. I feel they do far more harm than good, because the biggest recipients are the medium-sized independents that operate primarily in rural areas (I'm thinking here of the wireline side of companies like CenturyTel and AllTel and some of their slightly smaller brethren). And yet these are the areas where, very often, the incumbent phone companies seem to be every bit as monopolistic and hostile to competition as the old Bell System ever was. The "small" phone companies have a higher profit ratio than the "baby Bells" these days, and it's no wonder given the way they're rooting in the trough of the USF.I'm half in agreement with you there. I think USF is out of control,and that companies like CenturyTel are ripping the rest of the countryoff with their steep subsidies. And of course they're incrediblyanti-competitive. On the other hand, the network is more valuablebecause there is "universal service". I don't see why somebody in thewoods who paid less for his house than the telephone company did forthe wire to it should get local service for $12/month, while we in thehigh-cost-of-living cities pay $30/month. The FCC could fix thatnowadays with more clever use of wireless technology, but the Wirelessbureau and the Wireline bureau aren't exactly bending over backwardsto help each other. http://www.ionary.com/ion-FCC-comments.html has alittle tale on that topic. Maybe Canada doesn't have any of these added taxes and fees on phone service (if so, it would surprise me given the way they like to tax everything else, such as the tax on blank CD's to support the Canadian music industry), but still, I think that there should always be a clear distinction made between wireline telephony and VoIP. The two are not the same thing at all.Oh, Canada has a contribution system too. Phone service in the North,for instance, is very expensive to deliver. Well, the VoIP companies can't just interface to the PSTN through some kind of black wormhole that passes through the fourth dimension. They actually have to use a licensed CLEC to make the connection to the PSTN. And guess what, the CLEC does pay their share of the taxes and originating and terminating charges, all of which gets passed onto the VoIP company.Well, you are again half right. The CLEC does pay something. But therate that one LEC pays another to deliver a call to its subscriber(i.e., what Focal pays Ameritech to deliver a call to an Ameritechsubscriber in Detroit) is, under current rules, based on whether it is"local" or "access". The rate that CenturyTel and th
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