Voice is not voice

As a dedicated sports fanatic, I regularly participate in a couple of fantasy football leagues. Most of the time, this involves friendly games for not much more than bragging rights. Among the friends in one of those leagues is one who does everything in his power to circumvent the rules. Mind you, he doesn't break them. He just uses all the resources at his disposal to find a creative way around them.

I'm convinced if he were in the telecom field, he'd work for an Internet telephony service provider. Like my friend, ITSPs also are not breaking the rules, just finding ways around them.

Ameritech's decision to file a complaint over reciprocal compensation agreements with CLECs that connect IP voice gateways to its network was an unexpected but clever reaction to a fast growing market. According to Ameritech's own estimates, 40% to 50% of CLEC compensation is for calls that are not local. By contrast, BellSouth and U S West's attempts to impose access charges on IP phone-to-phone calls are more antagonistic, but may appear correct on the surface. After all, voice is voice and should be subject to the same regulations regardless of the technology or means of getting to-and through-the public network. Right? Not quite.

By connecting IP telephony servers to the public network, CLECs are no more violating their reciprocal compensation agreements than if they were connecting LANs that corporations could use to transmit voice between offices in the same city.

At the recent Voice on the Net show, the topic of access charges and reciprocal compensation was the source of more than a little nervous chuckling. Most ITSPs appeared confident the FCC will side with them given the commission's history of protecting Internet service providers from access charges. More to the point, former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt said at the same show that imposing the telecom regulatory regime on ITSPs is a classic example of putting old wine in a new bottle. "If voice is voice is voice, then flight is flight is flight and birds and airplanes should be regulated equally whether by the FAA or the EPA," he said.

Though he said it for effect, Hundt is on the mark. ITSPs have found a way around the regulatory regime by using data protocols and networks to transport voice. Perhaps it's time for regulators to ignore requests to impose access charges and foster an environment where creativity isn't penalized.