The U.S. Congress should pass some kind of telecommunications reform by late 2006, four congressional staffers focused on telecom issues predicted Wednesday, but the group couldn't agree on what kind of reform is needed.

The four, part of a panel discussion on telecom reform at a Broadband Policy Summit in Washington, D.C., discussed a range of options for telecom reform, including exempting VoIP from most traditional telecom regulations, creating a new regulatory category for advanced Internet communications and reforming how telecom carriers pay each other for network interconnection.

In an industry where video, voice and data are increasingly sent over the same network, Congress needs to focus on whether these "silos" of regulation are needed, said Mike O'Rielly, senior legislative assistant to Senator John Sununu (R-N.H.). Sununu in 2004 pushed a bill that would exempt VoIP from most state and national telecom regulations, but the bill did not pass through Congress.

"I'm an eternal optimist," O'Rielly said of the possibility of telecom reform happening soon. "I think this can be done, if not this year, early next year."

Earl Comstock, president and CEO of competitive telecom carrier trade group CompTel/ALTS, said policy makers had good reasons to regulate some telecom providers differently from others, based partly on which providers enjoyed near monopolies. "The silos are a convenient creation for some people who want to change the [telecom] statute," Comstock said.

Others on the panel predicted meaningful telecom reform could take much longer than O'Rielly's goal. Howard Symons, a telecom lawyer with Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky & Popeo PC, said initial discussions that led to the 1996 Telecommunications Act started about 20 years earlier.

Speakers on the telecom reform panel disagreed with each other on what needs to be done, with O'Rielly pushing for limiting regulation for VoIP and a Democratic aide suggesting VoIP should face some minimal regulations. VoIP should be required to provide enhanced 911 emergency dialing service, as well as to comply with law enforcement wiretapping requests, said Amy Levine, a legislative aide to Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.). Telephone customers, whether they use traditional wireline service or VoIP, expect services such as 911, she said.

O'Rielly questioned how Congress or the U.S. Federal Communications (FCC) could require VoIP services to comply with wiretapping laws, when Internet data service has not faced those regulations. "How do you reconcile that?" he said.

One of the big issues facing Congress and the FCC is regulatory parity between cable-modem broadband service and DSL offered by incumbent telecom carriers, panelists agreed. Through the 1996 Telecom Act and later FCC rulings, large incumbent telecom carriers have been required to share their networks with competing ISPs, while cable providers have been free from those regulations.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.