A perspective on regulation and users' experience

Abstract

This paper describes users' experiences of both telephony and Internet services and infers some requirements from these experiences. It argues that sender authentication is an essential feature of communications systems and that it is not adequately provided today. Some regulatory decisions and their arbitrary impact on users and companies are discussed. Many of the ideas presented are not innovative: on the contrary much of the content is asking obvious questions and making obvious assertions that are familiar to many in the industry and to the general public, but that have not been dealt with effectively by the combination of market forces, regulators and governments.