WASHINGTON-The experience of the wireless industry as it grew from an elite service to mass-market acceptance shows both the benefits and challenges of a light regulatory touch, acknowledged FCC Commissioner Kathleen Abernathy after giving a speech where she called for light regulation of emerging voice over Internet protocol services.
“Wireless was developed to transfer a call cell to cell; it was not designed to determine location. So when the Federal Communications Commission later on decided that location was important, it was a huge cost to basically rebuild a network to do location. Would those costs have been avoided if we had mandated that it be able to do location from the beginning? Maybe. I think that lesson tells us in the VoIP context that if we think a social policy obligation is important, the sooner we ask for it, the better so then the folks who are building the infrastructure don’t have to go back and do a retrofit. From the get-go they know,” said Abernathy.
Abernathy’s speech put her in the same camp as FCC Chairman Michael Powell, who recently told the National Press Club that when the commission looks at a nascent service it needs to justify the regulation rather than just automatically applying the old regulation to a new technology.
VoIP is a vexing problem for policy-makers because it shows convergence is here.
“The dream that lawmakers had in 1996 is finally becoming a reality. Formerly, distinct categories of communications services are collapsing into one, as voice, data and video are all transmitted via digital bits over packet-switching networks. In this converged marketplace, cable operators are not only providing video services but broadband Internet access and VoIP,” said Abernathy at “The Journey to Convergence: Challenges and Opportunities: A Digital Migration Symposium sponsored by the Institute for Communications Law Studies of the Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law. “In recent months, the most talked-about convergence application has undoubtedly been VoIP. VoIP allows anyone with a broadband connection to enjoy a full suite of voice services, often with greatly enhanced functionalities and at a lower cost than traditional circuit-switched telephony.”
In addition to whether VoIP providers should offer location-based 911 services, there are questions of wiretap access, disabilities access and what impact the acceptance of VoIP will have on universal service and the traditional public-switched telephone networks. Abernathy said the FCC needs to consider whether each of these “social-policy goals” needs to be mandated at this point or wait and see if regulation is necessary.
Like what was done with wireless, however, Abernathy said she prefers no economic regulation to be imposed on VoIP providers.
“In several respects, we can draw powerful lessons from our experience with wireless services. When PCS services were introduced in the 1990s, some called for the imposition of price and service regulations, based on the supposed entrenchment of the analog cellular providers. The FCC wisely employed a light touch, and its restraint helped the wireless sector grow into a vibrantly competitive and highly innovative industry,” said Abernathy during her speech.
Following Abernathy, a panel of experts debated how spectrum should be regulated. As is so often the case in this debate there were two sides-those who advocated moving away from the command-and-control style and those who like it the way it is.
“Because of the command-and-control adhocry spectrum management of the last 70 years, we have a lot different approaches,” said Peter Tenhula, deputy chief of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau. The question now is “do you move people out, or do you just bless the trespass?”
