The FCC earlier this month ruled that VoIP services generally cross state borders and, even in the cases where they do not, it is often impossible to tell. Gee, what a revelation!
Of course this has been clear for quite a while to anyone who actually thought about it for more than a few nanoseconds. But the FCC ruling was required to keep state regulators from ignoring this reality in their quest to “protect the public” and, in a total coincidence I assume, raise state revenue. Even though it’s correct in exempting VoIP from state regulation, the FCC’s opinion might come back to haunt it.
On Nov. 9, the FCC adopted a Memorandum Opinion and Order on VoIP service provider Vonage’s petition for a declaratory ruling requesting that the FCC pre-empt an order from the Minnesota utility commission imposing traditional telephone service regulations on VoIP services. I wrote about the Minnesota order shortly after it happened and mused about the usefulness of regulators in light of such orders. So I will not repeat those points now.
The FCC’s new order noted that state regulation, both in the telecom market and in general for commerce, was only valid for services confined within a state. It’s clear that VoIP services, like those offered by Vonage, cannot generally be seen as being limited to in-state, and the FCC order detailed a number of reasons that it was not feasible for a service provider to know if a particular call originated and terminated in one state. The reasons included that Vonage users can transport their equipment anywhere and still use it to place or receive calls and that Vonage offers customers the ability to use what appear to be local phone numbers from, let’s say New York City, anyplace they want to, such as Minneapolis.
The FCC recognized that the Minnesota order dealt with many important issues that needed to be resolved and said that the FCC would address some of these in its forthcoming overall IP-enabled services rules. One of those issues is Enhanced 911 (E911).
The IETF is investigating aspects of the E911-over-the-Internet problem and may develop recommendations and standards in the next year or two (See the Emergency Context Resolution with Internet Technologies (ecrit) BOF, the Geographic Location/Privacy (geopriv) working group and work in the SIP and SIPPING working groups).
The FCC might come to rue the day that it made many of the arguments in this order because the same arguments can be very easily made to say that VoIP (and most Internet) regulation should not be a national issue.
Just like calling a help desk for many American companies rings a phone halfway around the world in India there is no way to be sure that the VoIP phone that rings when you call a number in the 212 area code is in the U.S.
Disclaimer: Because it’s hard to outsource teaching in a residential university I don’t think Harvard has a direct opinion on the trend, but I didn’t ask and the above observations are my own.
