REGULATORS GRAPPLING WITH SOCIAL POLICY OBLIGATIONS OF VOIP
SAN JOSE -- It will be harder to let voice-over-Internet protocol (VOIP) companies off the regulatory hook on social policy obligations than conventional rate and service issues, Robert Pepper, the FCC’s chief of policy development, told a VON [voice on the net] conference here late Tues. The tougher issues “don’t go to monopoly power questions,” he said: “They don’t go to traditional regulatory issues. They go to things we as a society think are important.” He listed Universal Service Fund contributions, 911, the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) and disabled access.
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But obligations can be imposed even when online voice connections are set up ad hoc between users, without intervention of anyone in a recognizable carrier role, Pepper said. He said an Internet access provider always could be identified for this purpose, even in the most extreme case of a free, public Wi-Fi network. “This looks a lot like instant messaging with voice,” he said, but “you've still got some point of connectivity.” The VOIP business can avoid a great deal of administrative regulation by stepping up to obligations voluntarily, Pepper said, and avoiding regulation usually means avoiding emotional triggers such as people dying or rate-increase backlashes.
The greatest regulatory threat to VOIP is a Universal Service obligation, said VON Coalition attorney Glenn Richards. VOIP has resisted traditional carriers’ demand that a contribution be imposed by characterizing itself as a nascent industry, he said. Instead of adopting the upstarts’ proposal of a connection-based contribution, the FCC has proposed a methodology based on phone numbers, which the VON Coalition hasn’t taken a position on, Richards said. The group also is concerned that the FCC’s decision on AT&T’s petition to exempt its Internet telephony services from access charges be confined to that specific service, to avoid a possible adverse precedent for foreign regulation, Richards said.
State regulators are paying attention to VOIP, but without FCC direction, so “it doesn’t give states much to grasp and consider,” Richards said. N.Y.’s PSC applied interstate access charges to a VOIP carrier and the Cal. PUC is seeking comment on whether VOIP should be subject to service-quality rules, Richards noted. Vt. Public Service Board Policy Dir. Peter Bluhm said deciding which phone network costs should be supported by Internet voice was a tougher issue for state regulators, especially when it came to the local loop, than deciding on imposing policy obligations such as E-911 and those of CALEA