Telco's starting to charge extra for VoIP traffic

TeliaSonera has declared that it will start charging users higher rates for VoIP traffic according to the WSJ. AFAIK this makes them the first ISP to do this. Now, I've said it before that I would really like to see ISPs start to introduce quality of service management for different traffic classes on their network. This will be an integral part of the NBN, but it is not seen in many residential offerings and I have yet to see it anywhere in mobile networks. Now, if TeliaSonera started to differentiate the voice traffic AND used packet marking and adjusted queues on routers etc. to optimise the call flows then they could possibly justify charging extra. However, it is hard to justify charging extra without some sort of service differentiation. In order for people to accept the charges you need to give them a carrot, otherwise you're just beating them with a stick and pissing them off in the process.

No battery backup of NBN data connection

I'm not sure if everyone out there is following the National Broadband Network (NBN) as closely as I am, so I thought I should point out one small snippet that I know a lot of people are missing. In fact, it was only recently confirmed for me when reading the NBN blog yesterday.

The UNI-D port will not have battery backup.

This means of course during a power outage you'll lose your internet connection. If you do opt for the battery backup option it will only back up voice services connected via the UNI-V port (up to 5 hours of talk time is the stated backup). Now, initially this struck me as quite a silly option, however on second thoughts it does make some sense. I can't imagine too many people will be connecting to the NBN with an ethernet cable and a laptop. Most will use some form of router, most likely with wireless. This of course would also require some form of battery backup. So really if people want to ensure their internet connection (and any voice services delivered over the UNI-D port) they'll need a UPS providing backup to the NBN CPE and their router.