In this market it is voice telecommunications that bear the brunt of regulation and regulatory oversight and activity. So in dealing with OTT services – and a tacit admisson of clinging to business models no longer fit to purpose – craven providers have apparently managed to convince GoJ policymakers and advised that they can, unerringly, identify a purely voice payload carried by the IP packet during transmission. What they failed to put in the mix is the fact that the payload becomes identified as voice at the app located at the end point. Definite and positive identification can only be achieved in transmission if they, the providers, routinely and pervasively engage in deep packet inspection (DPI). That would be illegal in current regime. In our jurisdictions government are routinely scofflaws. But to make it palatable for our treaty obligations – check EPA, for example – they would have to pass legislation and raise regulations that broadly regulate the Internet. The trouble with that is international Internet policy is so intertwined in the development agenda that such legislative regimes would be seriously challenged from the international environment.

Then there is the technological responses. There are three elements available for manipulation in developing, provisioning and transiting OTT services; [Domain] Name, [IP] Number and Protocol parameters. These present a huge surface area and opportunities for purposeful manipulation. All that will happen is another round of innovation….and a few more multibillion virtual 30-odd employee companies getting ahead. The Isrealis have already figured out some moves.

Think back and remember the by-pass hue and cry. That was a result of growth in virtual carriers, so-called non-facilities based competitiors. [BTW, if one is interested, there is a fire sale by the GoJ on equipment seized from a few benighted by-pass operators who once operated in this market!] My experience comes from spending time in the [then] largest purveyor of plain old telephone service. I was hired by non-facilities based competitors and spent a few years working the I-66 corridor of N. Virginia where most were located. They were there also for cause. My specialty was the why and wherefores of manipultion of the call detail record (CDR) and how the switches utilized them. Most, if not all of these outfits are now gone from the landscape. Or, morphed into something else. For what was then esoteric is now mainstream. Rest assured this is one dumb idea that will come to no good end. Mark it down time ‘t’.

-Carlton