At 09:46 AM 3/2/2005, you wrote:

advancedIPpipeline is running another article this morning in their series of articles covering the Vonage service disruptions that [allegedly] invlove an ISP "port blocking" SIP connectitity between Vonage's client equipment and Vonage's servers. While there is a bit more decriptive detail in this article involving the nature of the service interruptions, Vonage's CEO, Jeffrey Citron, is trying to make a [in my opinion] weak argument that this type of traffic blocking is akin to censorship.

Actually, anticompetitive, and restraint-of-trade come in as better arguments. They go along with blocking port 587/110, keeping users from getting at legitimate, well-run remote mail servers. The end user paid for packet service, and the Internet generally permits any protocol to be run. ISPs legitimately block traffic at various protocol levels to deal with security and abuse matters. That's unlikely with VOIP. Blocking for dealing with security issues is one matter. Blocking to purposely harm competition is another, and will indeed open a can of worms if it persists.

The subject is of most concern at the edge. There are multiple long-haul providers, but often the consumer has only one option for multi-megabit connectivity. The entity currently enjoying the edge monopoly attempts to create vertical service alignment, to maximize profit. They DON'T want to provide packet data service, they want to provide ALL services (control content, filter, etc). This is not a technical matter, it's senior staff maximizing rate of return. To diverge from VoIP, an interesting situation will present itself in the future. Verizon is installing FTTH. Data offerings in their present service area are: 5, 15, and 30Mbps downstream. http://www22.verizon.com/fiosforhome/channels/fios/root/package.asp These speeds would support broadcast quality video delivery (even HD quality) if properly implemented. As hot a topic as voice is, the total money involved is decreasing. Video services, however, still represent a huge revenue stream. Will Verizon be a pure pipe provider? Or, will they attempt to control services? It would be nice to see Comcast get some meaningful competition. Till now, they could never find the money to upgrade or maintain their RF plant, but they had money available to pursue acquisition of Disney... As troublesome as VoIP may (appear) to be, imagine video. Very high duty-cycle, multi-megabit streams. "36ccs", so to speak. But, content creators could sell directly to end users. Potentially, no cable company, no TV networks. Perhaps even the studio structure will collapse. A lot depends on how well the FTTH providers, and their long-haul backbone partners do their job. Whether they embrace disruptive change, or resist it as an annoyance to their routine.