VoIP Could Avoid Usual Rules

WASHINGTON -- Voice-over-IP services could escape many of the fees and regulations usually imposed on telecommunications services, under a Congressional proposal.

VoIP and other Internet-based communications would be treated as an entirely new category of telecom service, under a bill announced Tuesday by members of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet.

"Our bill establishes Advanced Internet Communications Services as a unique form of services. That removes the debate that exists in the states and in the industry as to whether to classify AICS as an information service or a telecommunications service," says Representative Clifford Stearns (R-Florida), one of the bill's sponsors.

Beyond hearings, however, action on the bill is unlikely to take place until the 109th Congress convenes next year.

"Light Touch" Urged

The new category would impose only bare-bones requirements on IP services. VoIP providers would have to sustain universal service funding for low-income users, maintain emergency 911 service, and compensate the affected analog phone company or companies when a VoIP user made a call to an analog phone user.

Sponsors say that they hope the bill will stimulate private innovation and investment in the technology.

Stearns and Representative Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) introduced the Advanced Internet Communications Services Act of 2004, to include "services and applications that enable an end user to send or receive communication in Internet protocol format, regardless of whether the communication is voice, data, video or any other form."

Its intent echoes Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell's stated desire to apply a "light touch" in regulating digital communication technologies such as VoIP.

"VoIP has the capability to truly modernize the telecommunications market with advanced voice and data services," Stearns says. "The FCC is currently examining this issue and I think Chairman Powell is heading in the right direction in terms of VoIP regulatory treatment."

New Approach to Talk

More and more companies are developing VoIP technologies, and consumers are becoming more interested in these technologies, say the bill's authors.

Instead of sending bidirectional analog messages, VoIP operates over a data network using a method called packet switching. Whereas analog phone systems keep the connection between sender and receiver open at all times during a call, a data network cuts all audio information into small bits, labels each one with an address, and uses just enough network time to send them. The receiver then reassembles the packets into the original audio data. It's a much more efficient method.

The new legislation comes eight years after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 applied regulatory classifications to various types of telecommunications, but only touched on Internet-based methods.

"In introducing the Advanced Internet Communications Services Act of 2004, Mr. Stearns and I are seeking to frame the debate on advanced Internet communications regulation, including VoIP regulation, in anticipation of a broader telecommunications overhaul in the Congress beginning in 2005," Boucher says.