IPcentral Weblog
  The DACA Blog

Wednesday, February 4, 2004

 
Straight Talk on VoIP
(previous | next)
 

I've been a strong proponent of both substantive and procedural modesty when it comes to considering whether and how the emerging VoIP services should be regulated. In my "Metaphysics of VoIP" piece, I concluded, "given the rapidly growing competitiveness of the telecom marketplace, there is no sound rationale for traditional economic regulation of VoIP", including VoIP services provided by the incumbent telcos. As importantly, I suggested "policymakers should use VoIP to seize the opportunity to move quickly to create a uniform deregulatory environment for all the players."

In a new piece published yesterday on CNET, "VoIP Regulation: A Plea for Procedural Modesty," I urge the FCC not to initiate an open-ended VoIP rulemaking proceeding as has intimated it intends to do, but instead to proceed promptly "to create a VoIP policy framework simply by deciding the individual petitions brought before it in the least regulatory way." By adjudicating each petition narrowly on its merits, in other words by employing more of a common law step-by-step approach, "the agency is more likely to avoid regulatory overreaching." The important thing is for the Commission to resolve unsettled issues and to remove uncertainty without the inordinate delay that has typically plagued its typically open-ended generic rulemaking proceedings.

Two recent items illustrate divergent approaches to the public policy discussion regarding VoIP, one filled with straight talk and the other with obfuscation:

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association has just released a thoughtful White Paper entitled, "Responsibilities and Rights: A Regulatory Model for Facilities-Based VoIP Competition." NCTA recognizes that most of the traditional public utility legacy requirements should not be imported into the VoIP world. It eschews the metaphysical "gotcha" arguments that invoke old regulatory classifications in favor of a good-faith effort focused on trying to figure out, as a matter of sound policy, what regulatory obligations (CALEA, 911) make sense going-forward. I commend the paper for its straight talk.

Not so a February 2 piece concerning VoIP that appears on Jim Glassman's Tech Central Station by Duane Freese entitled, "Paradigm Shift or Ancien Regime?" It correctly observes--as have I--that VoIP has the potential to create a paradigm shift in communications policy. That's true. Recall I said, "policymakers should use VoIP to seize the opportunity to move quickly to create a uniform deregulatory environment for all the players."

But then Freese's essay employs some slick sophistry in interest of furthering AT&T's position that it should not have to pay access charges to the local phone companies for using the LECs' circuit-switched lines to originate or terminate long distance calls made using ordinary telephone handsets. AT&T maintains that as long as--get this!--any part of the long-haul backbone facilities that carry the call employ IP technology, then the call should not be subject to same access charges paid by other long distance carriers that use the LEC facilities to complete calls.

In my view, under the FCC's current rules, as they now exist, AT&T's position has little merit. The purpose of the access charges is to compensate the LECs' for the use of their local circuit-switched lines, which AT&T is admittedly using. They have nothing to do with the IP long haul facilities that AT&T says it is using. But here is the real sophistry: Throughout his piece, Freese equates the payment of access charges by AT&T for its phone-to-phone service amounts with "regulation" of VoIP. This is not so, of course. What it amounts to is playing by the rules in place until the rules are changed. And paying for the use of facilities owned by others that AT&T uses to originate and terminate its calls.

Now, I'll be the first to agree--really, for me, re-reiterate--that the FCC needs to move quickly to further reform its access charge regime and morph it into a cost-based inter-carrier compensation regime appropriate for a multi-carrier, multi-service, multi-platform, competitive communications world. Sure, it's not an easy job and there will be political heat. But the task is on the commissioners' job sheets, and it has been hanging fire for too long.

To get from here to there we need straight talk all around.

posted by Randolph May @ 11:34 AM | General

Share |

Link to this Entry | Printer-Friendly

Post a Comment:





 
Blog Main
RSS Feed  
Recent Posts
  EFF-PFF Amicus Brief in Schwarzenegger v. EMA Supreme Court Videogame Violence Case
New OECD Study Finds That Improved IPR Protections Benefit Developing Countries
Hubris, Cowardice, File-sharing, and TechDirt
iPhones, DRM, and Doom-Mongers
"Rogue Archivist" Carl Malamud On How to Fix Gov2.0
Coping with Information Overload: Thoughts on Hamlet's BlackBerry by William Powers
How Many Times Has Michael "Dr. Doom" Copps Forecast an Internet Apocalypse?
Google / Verizon Proposal May Be Important Compromise, But Regulatory Trajectory Concerns Many
Two Schools of Internet Pessimism
GAO: Wireless Prices Plummeting; Public Knowledge: We Must Regulate!
Archives by Month
  September 2010
August 2010
July 2010
June 2010
  - (see all)
Archives by Topic
  - A La Carte
- Add category
- Advertising & Marketing
- Antitrust & Competition Policy
- Appleplectics
- Books & Book Reviews
- Broadband
- Cable
- Campaign Finance Law
- Capitalism
- Capitol Hill
- China
- Commons
- Communications
- Copyright
- Cutting the Video Cord
- Cyber-Security
- DACA
- Digital Americas
- Digital Europe
- Digital Europe 2006
- Digital TV
- E-commerce
- e-Government & Transparency
- Economics
- Education
- Electricity
- Energy
- Events
- Exaflood
- Free Speech
- Gambling
- General
- Generic Rant
- Global Innovation
- Googlephobia
- Googlephobia
- Human Capital
- Innovation
- Intermediary Deputization & Section 230
- Internet
- Internet Governance
- Internet TV
- Interoperability
- IP
- Local Franchising
- Mass Media
- Media Regulation
- Monetary Policy
- Municipal Ownership
- Net Neutrality
- Neutrality
- Non-PFF Podcasts
- Ongoing Series
- Online Safety & Parental Controls
- Open Source
- PFF
- PFF Podcasts
- Philosophy / Cyber-Libertarianism
- Privacy
- Privacy Solutions
- Regulation
- Search
- Security
- Software
- Space
- Spectrum
- Sports
- State Policy
- Supreme Court
- Taxes
- The FCC
- The FTC
- The News Frontier
- Think Tanks
- Trade
- Trademark
- Universal Service
- Video Games & Virtual Worlds
- VoIP
- What We're Reading
- Wireless
- Wireline
Archives by Author
PFF Blogosphere Archives
We welcome comments by email - look for a link to the author's email address in the byline of each post. Please let us know if we may publish your remarks.
 










The Progress & Freedom Foundation