IPUrbia

The title says it all. The FCC ruled that rural lecs must terminate voice over IP traffic from their competitors. Over the past couple of years, many of the local telcos had taken the stance that since VoIP is a “data service”, it does not necessarily fall under the same interconnection requirements that apply to traditional “communication services”.

This sort of legal wrangling points to a fundamental problem in the industry today: the last major telecom legislation is over 11 years old, and the industry and technology has radically and fundamentally changed. The result has been legal and political maneuverings over what are “data” services and what are “communication services”; a minute distinction that has made a handful of telecom lawyers a lot of money. The FCC, for their part, has leveraged that distinction to the hilt and has repeatedly used it as a distinction to shape the regulatory landscape to their liking.

In some ways, there really does need to be an overhaul of the regulatory framework. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 is dated to say the least, and many of the programs (ie USF) are generally understood to be broken. The problem is that the players who need the most regulations–the telco and cable (mono|duo)polies–have the most political clout. In the end, there would be little to hope for out of such legislation except for some token, meaningless regulations and an overworking of subsidies to maintain the status-quo. Some new competition would solve a lot of problems, but that is, for reasons previously discussed on this blog, not likely to happen.