WASHINGTON - regulations and be treated by the U.S. government as a lightly regulated information service under legislation that Sen. John Sununu plans to introduce by early next week.

Sununu (R-N.H.) has drafted a bill that defines most VoIP services as information services, like most other Internet-related services, under congressional and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations. The Sununu bill would exempt VoIP from most regulations governing traditional voice telecommunications, including federal law-enforcement wiretap regulations and access charges typically shared among telecom providers.

Sununu and Rep. Charles "Chip" Pickering (R-Miss.), who plans to introduce a similar bill in the House, said the legislation is necessary to give clarity to VoIP vendors and customers, even though the FCC began a rule-making proceeding on VoIP in mid-February. FCC Chairman Michael Powell has also called for VOIP to be exempt from state regulations, but the legislation could help avoid the court battles that have followed other FCC telecommunications decisions, Sununu said.

"The laws that are on the books now really don't deal in a clear way with VoIP technology," Sununu said. "(The bill) preempted heavy-handed state regulation, and it even limits the FCC's role at this particular time."

Calls that start as traditional voice calls, are switched to an IP network, then terminate back on the traditional switched telephone network are not exempted from telecommunications regulations in Sununu's bill. Telecom companies like AT&T are already experimenting with carrying some of their traditional voice calls over IP networks.

The bill is intended to narrowly define VoIP service and exempt it from regulation and taxes, Sununu said. "There are some people who would like to rewrite the 1996 Telecom Act now, today," he added. "This is not a piece of legislation that's designed to rewrite decades and decades and decades of telecom law. It's a piece of legislation that's designed to ensure that this particular area of IP services is dealt with in a forward-looking way, that we don't try to take an archaic or outdated framework and try to jam it on what is a tremendous and promising technology."

The Sununu bill, called the VOIP Regulatory Freedom Act, would direct the FCC to act within 180 days of its passage to work out an alternative plan for access fees and a flat-fee mechanism for collecting universal service fees, which are used to bring telecommunications services to poor or rural areas.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.