Social obligations imposed on VoIP won’t go away but will only pi...

rising popularity. (2) A growing focus on social obligations rather than regulation for competition in telecom. (3) High visibility, notably in coverage of fatalities from failed bids to use VoIP for 911 calls. (4) Financials like Public Safety Answering Points’ money needs and incumbent providers’ scant VoIP revenue. “In 2 years, we've had more regulation on VoIP than we had in telephony in 100 years,” Forbes said. Federal policy-making aims to “create a playing field where everyone looks the same” among wireline voice service providers, he said. Rather than stick VoIP in a standard regulatory silo by Telecom Act title, the FCC is using “piecemeal, incremental regulation,” Forbes said. The FCC has focused on a subset of Internet voice it defines as “interconnected VoIP,” but DoJ’s stance on CALEA compliance and draft federal bills on customer proprietary network information seek more general regulation of VoIP, Forbes said. Today’s noisiest issues are the least important, he said, referring to data protection, disability access and competition. “The big 3” are law enforcement and emergency services access and universal service, which Forbes defines as relating mainly to “enormously expensive” network build-outs in the Midwest’s low-density “square states,” he said. “The FCC is very much engaged” in such matters, and on CALEA and other issues, DoJ and the rest of the Administration mainly get what they want from the Commission, Forbes said. The crucial definition of “call identifying information” for purposes of VoIP CALEA compliance awaits a 2nd FCC order on the topic, probably in 3-6 months, he said. That order likely will put off the compliance deadline, Forbes said. When the order is challenged in court, Congress probably will respond by rolling VoIP obligations into a broader law applying CALEA to all electronic communications, he predicted. And VoIP will be subject to universal service fund contributions, Forbes said. Beyond these matters, policy-makers have yet to settle crucial questions on VoIP, he said: Municipal Wi-Fi, ad-supported VoIP businesses, call encryption, replacing phone numbers in caller identification, trusted 3rd parties and hybrid networks that include conferencing, wired-wireless convergence and so-called leaky PBXs.