VoIP, Spam, and Access Charges: A Radical Proposal

Voice spam might be the curse of VoIP.  The do-not-call list is not going to work for VoIP calls from obnoxious humans or robots because they don’t have to be in a jurisdiction which enforces do-not-call. There’ll always be some small nation glad to host them.

The only obstacle to international voice spam is today’s cost of an international call. But, when both caller and callee use a service like Skype or Vonage, the incremental cost of these calls is zero to both parties.  As soon as there is a critical mass of IP phones, they may never stop ringing with unwanted calls.

Look what’s happened to email because of the infinitesimal cost of adding another name to outgoing spam.  As bad as email spam is, voice spam will be much worse because most voice is realtime and most of us only have one channel (with two ears) for receiving it.  At worst, we might have to block calls from anyone we hadn’t put on a positive list.  That would be a significant barrier to communication.

The answer to both email and voice spam, I believe, lies in access charges.  Today in the US access charges are levied by local phone companies to compensate them (overcompensate them would be more accurate) for terminating interstate phone calls.  The current system was devised during the breakup of AT&T in order to split calling revenue between AT&T, the long distance company, and its regional offspring.  The idea was that the regionals own the local loop so they should be paid for calls which come from somewhere else and use the local loop for the last mile.  The whole system of access charges is in disarray over issues such as the correct level of compensation, rural subsidies, and whether VoIP calls are interstate.

In fact, once all of our phone calls reach us over a broadband local loop which we pay for on a flat monthly basis – and that time is coming very quickly – then clearly the right to levy access charges belongs only to you - the recipient of the calls.  If you are renting the local loop as you do with cable, DSL, or wireless Internet access, then only you should be entitled to collect access charges.

When we assess and collect the access charges for both email and voice calls addressed to us, spam will cease to be a problem.

Here’s one way it might work:

1. You set the prices for reaching you with an unsolicited email or voice mail.  The price for each can be any amount you want!
2. Callbacks and replies are “solicited” so they are exempt.
3. You can set up a list of callers and email writers who are exempt from charges.
4. You can retroactively exempt any call or email from charges and, at the same time, put the caller or sender on your free list.  So, when Aunt Sally finds you even though you forgot to put her on the free list, you can forgive the charge.
5. Charges due are always subtracted in advance from an account or credit line of the caller or sender.
6. Payments are made periodically to you.

The higher you set the bar, the less unsolicited communication you will receive.  On the other hand, you can set the bar low and get revenue and information from those who feel you are a good prospect worth the price of reaching.  This could even get fancy and you could “advertise” your demographics in order to get paid for looking at ads.

This sounds weird but there is nothing strange from an advertiser’s point of view in paying to reach a qualified prospect.  And we also sell access to ourselves; we do that when we give up our email address or phone number in order to get “free information” or to be entered into a contest.  We do that when we watch the ads in a television show in return for the content of the show (at least, before Tivo, we did).

At one bold stroke, we settle forever who is entitled to access charges and eliminate email and voice spam as problems.  All of the technology to do this already exists.  The business model shouldn’t be difficult.  There is an opportunity to make money by running services which verify identifications, host free lists, clear transactions, provide mailing lists which include the cost for reaching each recipient, etc.

The problem, a huge problem, is how do we get from here to there.  How do I start to charge people for sending me email or calling me when no mechanism yet exists for them to pay me?  Many an idea for a network nirvana has died because there is no mechanism to get from nowhere to fully networked which has any benefit to the early adopters.  This may be one of those fatally flawed ideas.  It should be easier to implement in the voice world, where people are still used to paying for most calls they make and access charges are already being collected, than in the email world but I haven’t figured the transition out for either world.

Please comment with transition ideas or, if you are an incorrigible entrepreneur, keep them to yourself until you get funding from your favorite VC to implement them.

Comments

[Madhu]

This probably turns the entire information search thing on its head. So far if i had to find something, i had to put keywords in to a search bar and figure out. now i can add what i am looking for in my profile - esp in terms of commerce - say buying a book and a telemarketer can call me and probably his conversion ratio is also higher. great service..

Madhu

[walter]

access fees don't work. look how much junk snail mail you receive every day-each one costs a direct mailer $0.60-2.00 to send. marketers are willing to spend this amount of money to solicit a person, but everyday people like you and me are not. there is no economic system that can stop spam, spim, or spit. whitelists are the only real answer...

[direwolff]

If there's a way for advertisers to reach people directly, won't that have a profound affect on people's access to content they may not have otherwise paid for, but enjoy? If we consider that today advertisers sponsor Web sites, TV, radio, sporting events, all in an effort to reach us and to get their message in front of us, what happens when they no longer need to do this? What happens when they no longer need to sponsor a TV show or Yahoo!'s Web site where we get so many services w/o having to pay for these (other than through our attention)? What then? Do we now need to recalibrate ourselves and begin to pay directly (as in 'out of our pockets') for all of these services because we're now more enriched by the advertisers who are paying us directly? Sounds like this will take time and a very significant paradigm shift for people to understand the implications of why they should now pay for everything they don't pay for today (at least in real cash terms). Wouldn't you say? Given that slowly, cable TV has grown to rival the free access, and satellite radio w/the likes of Howard Stern may actually begin impacting free radio, this may perhaps not be such a radical thing, but I still enjoy so many free Web sites... ;-)

Also, you may want to check out a company called Affini.com who is trialing the concept of charging those who want to reach you for e-mail correspondence (to deter spam).

[Roger Bohn]

There are numerous variations of this scheme circulating for email. One of the most popular involves setting up intermediaries who sell some form of "postage" (same idea, different name). A popular variation (which I personally think is pointless) is that a charge is levied only if the receiver tells the intermediary "I didn't like this message - charge the sender." To my mind, that greatly increases the traffic overhead and adds little true value, but Bell Labs has patented the wrinkle ands seems to think it useful. Yours is the first suggestion I've seen that VOIP will need the same treatment. I can dig out some paper references if anyone is interested.

How to get there from here: Even one really large company could start this scheme, and it would take off from there. They announce that their servers will filter email taking into account how much postage has been paid. To get over any public outcry, they donate all the postage receipts to charity. Also, the scheme is strictly optional - you don't HAVE to pay postage, it's just that your message will get higher priority and be much less likely to hit the spam bucket.

Initially, the system is intended mostly for business-to-business use. From there, they put the protocols in the public domain, turn over administration of the fee collection to a non-profit consortium, and encourage other companies to use it. Within a year or two, it is made available to private individuals who want to sign up. At some point, the system has to include an option that the recipient can keep the postage, but it does not have to start out that way. As long as the sender has to pay a few cents per message, it makes spam uneconomic.

I hope you will pursue this. A big IT company such as IBM or MS would seem ideal candidates to start this on their own initiative.

[Jay Meranchik]

The issue here is how everyone will bill and settle with each other. The same holds true for global VoIP inter-connects on a mass scale. Joining a global peering exchange which is a neutral entity to manage the billing and settlement piece is a natural place for that to happen. We are building that peering exchange for carriers, next step could be the end user.

[dave zahn]

This is an intriguing idea. We could imagine that paid audiences would accept lower compensation for ads that they judged to be 'better' than other ads. Advertiser would find it 'cheaper' to deliver ads that people wanted. This could create an unprecedented motive force in advertising that would cause the medium to evolve in wonderfully unforeseen ways; perhaps toward higher quality, more artful, or more entertaining advertising; or perhaps toward more outrageous, and shocking advertising. I can imagine a richly stratified audience landscape, with various tastes demanding, and precisely receiving, a wildly diverse spectrum of carefully tailored, and very funky, advertising messages. Such an advertising landscape would be shaped by our explicit desires instead of our unconscious reflexes. I'm ready, sign me up!