Fight for regulatory changes, Powell tells VoIP providers

Outgoing FCC Chairman Michael Powell urged VoIP equipment vendors and service providers at VON Spring 2005 to keep pressing for the regulatory changes they need to succeed.

Despite the various FCC decisions he passed during his seven-year tenure that helped clear the way for economically viable VoIP service providers, there are more decisions sought by government that vendors and providers should work toward achieving.

These decisions include establishing 911 emergency technology for VoIP to determine accurately where a caller is located. Powell said the government still needs an effective way to legally wiretap VoIP calls and the industry needs to figure out how to pay into the universal service fund, a tax on telecom services to subsidizes phone service in rural areas. "I'm pretty confident you don't want [regulators] doing it for you," he said.

Staci Pies, regulatory vice president for Austin, Texas-based VoIP provider Point One, urged Powell to press the FCC to decide before he leaves at the end of the month whether VoIP providers should pay into that fund. She said she heard the commission will vote to do nothing on the issue rather than decide and that would leave VoIP providers in limbo.Currently, VoIP providers charge customers based on their costs for providing the service, without contributing to the fund, and this exemption has allowed the VoIP industry to soar, she said. "How do we continue to soar on cost-based fees if we don't know what the rules are?" she said.  

Powell delivered his farewell address Tuesday at the VON conference where he was lionized by the show's organizer for protecting VoIP from regulations that would have killed it as a service.

The effort Powell says he made was to convince the commission that VoIP was, "generally something new and not a new way of doing something old."

He says the FCC should continue to protect VoIP based on what he called four Internet freedoms: free access to legal Internet content; freedom to use any application over the Internet; freedom to attach any device to an Internet connection; and the right to clear information about service plans.

Powell took credit for a ruling last week that fined an ISP that blocked ports used by customers of IP phone provider Vonage, which uses generic Internet connections to tie its customers to its network. The ruling came three-and-a-half weeks after the complaint was filed. "Three weeks. In the regulatory world that would be like lighting speed, like zero to 60 in three and a half seconds," Powell said to applause.

Powell said the issue calls for a compromise where VoIP providers pay something to the fund, but perhaps not using the same criteria as traditional carriers.  He says legislation may be required to clear up the matter and urged providers to keep pestering the FCC until they get what they want.

Powell encouraged venture capitalists to play a larger role in FCC proceedings by letting commissioners know what policies will encourage them to invest and what policies will prevent them from investing in telecom companies. "I think you have a lot more credibility than even the companies," he said. "You are arms merchants. You just want your money back."