Delivered-To: dfarber+@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 19:58:38 -0500
From: David S Isenberg <isen@xxxxxxxx>
From isen.blog:
http://www.isen.com/blog/archives/2003_11_01_archive.html#106859799365154370
Has the FCC already decided how to regulate Internet Telephony?
Former FCC Chair Reed Hundt reads a recent
<http://apcointl.org/documents/senWydenLtr.pdf>letter from FCC Chairman
Michael Powell to Senator Ron Wyden to indicate that the FCC is speeding
headlong towards an unknown set of VOIP regulations with as little public
comment as possible. Hundt spoke today (November 11, 2003) at Jeff
Pulver's Wireless Internet Summit in Santa Clara CA.
I've known for several weeks that the FCC will be holding a
<http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-240867A1.doc>hearing
on Voice Over Internet Protocol on December 1. I had thought it would be
like the delightfully informative and informal
<http://www.fcc.gov/osp/rural-wisp.html>Rural Wireless Internet Service
Provider Workshop that the FCC held on November 4. But this is not to be.
Apparently the December 1 meeting is to be a formal FCC hearing designed
to legally circumvent the more normal, deliberative Notice of Inquiry
process, which is designed to solicit, collect and consider a wide range
of public comments.
The FCC is in a hurry. "Things have greatly accelerated over the last
year," writes Powell to Wyden, "and so have the FCC's actions."
The hearing will hear "a wide range of witnesses from industry and
government," but not (apparently) from the entrepreneurial creators of the
next communications industry, or from end users who stand to benefit from
the demise of the old telephone "industry".
"Shortly after the forum," the letter continues, "The FCC will initiate a
Notice of Public (sic) Rule Making on VoIP services." (Actually, it is a
notice of *PROPOSED* rule making -- Hundt says that the "Freudian" slip is
telling.) As if the FCC will not need much time to consider the
"witnesses" in the forum, as if the FCC already knows what the rules will
say, as if the fix is in.
Powell closes by saying, "As the Senate moves to debate the Internet Tax
Moritorium in the coming days, I urge caution in addressing VoIP issues."
One of the VoIP issues on the table is Universal Service, according to
Powell. That's a tax. It's a tax to support service to the rural and the
poor that is being explored by somebody who recently likened the Internet
to a Mercedes Benz -- a luxury, not a necessity.
Now that the Internet promises to a large proportion of the U.S. $300
Billion annual telecom revenues back into the pockets of rate payers, will
the FCC prop up the telephone industry at the expense of the U.S. public
with a tax?
It is not likely that the FCC, which recently ignored enormous public
feedback about relaxed ownership caps on media, will be responsive to
pleas to protect Voice over the Internet. But maybe Congress will. And
maybe Powell will anticipate this sooner, rather than later, because
Powell is a smart guy. Powell gets it. And he doesn't need any more egg on
his face. More soon.
David I
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