Who decides?

Some days, it seems like the services of tomorrow can't break free of the rules of the past.

That's the case with multiple battles currently raging within telecom -- the VoIP patent mess, the fight of Iowa telcos to make money off large telecom players through regulatory arbitrage, and the ongoing Net neutrality debate.

In each case, a higher authority -- the federal courts, the Federal Communications Commission or the U.S. Congress -- is being asked to sort out issues that the telecom industry can't work through on its own.

And therein lies the rub -- when politicians, judges and bureaucrats get involved, is the industry really better off?

In some cases, maybe. I suspect the FCC will be able to decide whether it's legal for long-distance companies to decide on their own to stop paying termination charges to independent telcos, when the latter have cleverly leveraged one state's higher termination rates and the ability to use VoIP and voice gateways to "terminate" calls in Iowa that actually go all over the world, to make hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions.

I question, however, whether a jury of smart people should be deciding the VoIP patent question, and I certainly don't believe Congress is fit to set up rules for the next generation of Internet services. That's why, even though I think most of the clamor for Net neutrality is self-serving nonsense, it makes sense for the FCC to step in here as well.

Of course, it would make more sense if a reasonable debate could be conducted and some compromise found, but that's clearly not going to happen.

E-mail me at cwilson3@telephonyonline.com.