Last month, the FCC appeared to settle the ongoing argument about the need for VoIP services to include "lawful intercept" capabilities supporting law enforcement. The FCC is responsible for enforcing the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, also referred to as CALEA.

In its ruling, the FCC noted it will require "that all carriers providing facilities-based broadband Internet access and interconnected VoIP service to submit interim reports to the Commission to ensure that they will be CALEA-compliant by May 14, 2007."

(For the full 84-page ruling, click on this PDF link.)

While the FCC realizes that industry standards aren't yet firm and technology isn't deployed to offer packet-based phone call monitoring, the FCC observes "the record demonstrates that Law Enforcement and industry have made progress toward the goal of achieving successful implementation of CALEA."

Now a few million-dollar questions about CALEA: Must Skype or other PC-to-PC call providers also comply with the FCC ruling? Must calls being controlled by a Unified Communications session controller over private data networks be available for call monitoring? What about calls using AOL, Yahoo or MSN voice capabilities?

So far, it looks like these kinds of "click to" calls will be exempt from monitoring, but then again, are these really voice calls? When Vonage was born, its version of VoIP escaped many of the same annoyances traditional voice was subjected to like 911 and CALEA. Can the same be said for Skype and others in the future?

We'll pick up this discussion in our next newsletter. If you'd like to add your opinion, please send us an e-mail or post your comments to the innovations and legislation blog at Webtorials.

For more on this topic read "'Net pioneers sound security alarm over VoIP wiretaps".

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Larry Hettick is a principal analyst at Current Analysis.