|
Voice
on the Net (VON) Coalition Principles
The longstanding U.S. policy of "hands off the Internet," has
been emulated by governments
everywhere and has been an enormous success. VoIP is a force for increased
competition, a
platform for innovation, and a driver of broadband deployment.
The best public policy is to refrain from applying traditional
telecom regulation to
VoIP and to affirmatively create a national policy vision that ensures
that traditional
telecom regulation does not apply to Internet voice communications throughout
the
country.
While members of this coalition have different views on how much market
power some
facilities-based telecom providers have, we all agree that policies should
be continued that
permit entities that do not have significant market power to deploy voice
over IP free from
traditional telecom regulation.
The Coalition freely concedes that there are important social policy
issues where the FCC and
state regulators have a legitimate role. The VoIP community is prepared
to work constructively
on such issues, including providing access to those with disabilities,
access to emergency
services, cooperation with law enforcement, secure funding for universal
service, and reform of
inter-carrier compensation. These legitimate concerns can be addressed
without imposing
heavy regulation on VoIP and that if they are addressed successfully the
pressure to regulate
VoIP will dissipate. The coalition supports efforts to address these issues
including:
- Emergency Services. VoIP industry representatives
have been working with the
National Emergency Number Association’s (“NENA’s”)
VoIP/Packet Technical Committee
and VoIP Operations Committee to assess the current state of 911 provisioning
in VoIP
environments and to develop 911 solutions. There are important differences
between
the provision of 911 for traditional PSTN traffic and for VoIP, but there
is every reason to
expect that technical solutions exist to provide users with reliable access
to public safety
services. NENA and representatives of the VoIP industry recently reached
a voluntary
agreement on the next steps to develop the technical and operational mechanisms
for
providing effective access to emergency services by users of VoIP.
- Law Enforcement. Voluntary efforts also are underway
with respect to compliance
with CALEA, the statute that addresses cooperation with law enforcement.
Packetswitched
technology poses unique technical issues, but manufacturers and providers
of
VoIP are moving ahead to implement compliance capabilities into their
systems.
Moreover, CALEA has a different definition of telecommunications than
the
Communications Act, so there is no need to define VoIP as telecommunications
for
Communications Act purposes in order to mandate that VoIP manufacturers
and service
providers cooperate with law enforcement.
- Universal Service. As for universal service, of course,
VoIP providers directly or
indirectly already contribute to USF. The fact that more and more calls,
including
wireless and business calls made on modal access as well as some VoIP
calls, don’t
contribute or contribute unevenly to USF should not be an excuse for regulation
of all
these modes. Instead, what is needed is reform of funding for explicit
USF. We believe
that a numbers-based contribution mechanism would better ensure the continued
sustainability of USF than any attempt simply to include VoIP or other
information
services in the current revenue-based mechanism. If one of the goals of
universal
service is to provide affordable voice communications to rural America,
then no
technology offers more promise for providing more affordable communications,
not only
to rural America, but to all of America.
- Inter-carrier Compensation. We urge the FCC to move
away from a hodgepodge of
implicit subsidies and towards a rational series of voluntary inter-carrier
business
arrangements with regulation required only when there is effective monopoly
ownership
of a bottleneck. "Bill and keep" may well turn out to be an
effective arrangement as it
has been in much of the IP world.
- Phone-to-Phone VoIP Regulation. One suggestion that
has been made is that
phone-to-phone Voice over IP be regulated while "other" VoIP
is not. This would be a
mistake even if it were possible and it is, in fact, impossible to define
today what is a
phone. It is phone-to-phone traffic which has funded and continues to
fund the
buildout of a worldwide network of interfaces between the PSTN and the
Internet around
the world. These interfaces are necessary so that VoIP phone and voice
PBXes can
connect with the TDM world and vice versa. It is the existence of these
networks of
traffic exchange points which are making possible the deployment of innovative
new
VoIP services because the users of these services have full connectivity
to the TDM
world – not just to other VoIP users.
- State Role. We also don’t deny that there is
a legitimate role for state governments,
but that role has to be defined in a way that is consistent with the interstate
nature of
the Internet and the practical problems that would be caused by varying
state
regulation.
- FCC Role. We believe that the FCC has the legal authority
to continue to keep its hands
off the Internet and IP networks even when they are used for voice applications.
Voice
over IP should be classified as an information service and regulated only
to the extent
necessary pursuant to the Commission’s Title I or ancillary jurisdiction.
VoIP providers shouldn’t be regulated like phone companies
with large market power. The historic reason for telephony regulation
was the existence of monopoly providers and an infrastructure which made
it nearly impossible to challenge such monopolies even in the rare case
where it was legal to do so. In contrast, a provider of a VoIP service
has no need to own or build the infrastructure on which the service is
delivered and, since there are no historic or
even nascent VoIP monopolies, there is simply no basis for regulation of
any such provider that
does not have significant market power.
###
|
|
