Moving forward on VOIP. According to Telephony magazine:


I need to think about this some more, but my initial gut feeling is that the proposed approach won't work.  There's a reason it's called the inter-net.  It's a network of networks.  If the law chases particular network configurations, it just pushes companies to engineer around the rules.  Just look at how the death of Napster has shifted P2P file-trading to more decentralized systems like Kazaa.  

I'm not sure what's gained by dividing the VOIP world up into these three categories.  If a network is truly private, not interconnected to the outside world, like a secure intranet behind a firewall with no traffic going outside, why would the FCC even think about regulating applications on that network?  Anything that touches the public Internet (i.e. everything but the first scenario) touches the public switched telephone network at some point.  And "evolving peer-to-peer networks" can be in either category. 

It sounds like the FCC is trying to update the distinction in its 1998 report to Congress between "phone-to-phone" and "computer-to-computer" VOIP.  I was very involved in drafting that report, which I'm convinced was the right approach at the time.  However, the basic framework is ultimately untenable.  All computers are phones, and an increasing percentage of phones (including all wireless ones) are computers.  Many things that are neither computers nor phones, like Vocera's clip-on badges, are now VOIP devices.  The point of the end-to-end principle is that the ends of the Internet are malleable. 

If the legal requirements change when an end user swaps a computing device labeled "phone" for one labeled "computer," the rules will fail.  The real issue here is that basic voice service is going to be deregulated.  There is no way to put the VOIP genie back into the bottle without destroying it.  Owners of monopoly infrastructure (both physical and logical) should still be regulated, because otherwise they will prevent competition and innovation at higher levels.  The link between that regulation and voice phone calls needs to be broken. 

The question is whether the FCC will use its skill and creativity to take the great leap forward, or will essentially dither until Congress is forced to pass a new Telecommunication Act in 2008 or 2010.  A new statute is the right answer, because the old law is fundamentally tied to the outdated old communications paradigm.  But we won't get a new law any sooner even if Congress starts now, because of the interests involved.  What's at stake now is the path of the communications industry over the next five to seven years.  VOIP could kickstart the economy and the technology sector during that period, but only if regulators do the right thing.
[Werblog]