WASHINGTON-Legislation ensuring Internet Protocol-enabled services are not subject to traditional telecommunications regulation will be rolled into the telecom reform bill being drafted by the Senate Commerce Committee, said Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.).
“I have written legislative language dealing with IP services, not just voice,” Sununu told a luncheon on Voice over Internet Protocol. “My purpose is to work with Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, rather than putting a bill out there and working against the process.”
Sununu introduced legislation last year that would have classified VoIP as an information service, releasing it from telecom regulation. The bill died when Congress ended its work last year. Many had expected him to re-introduce it before now.
For the first 100 years of telephony, circuit-switched technology was used. Circuit-switched technology dedicates voice channels for conversations. Using IP, VoIP chops the conversation into bits and bytes and sends it over the Internet and then reassembles it at the other end. While there are quality concerns about this process, many consumers and businesses appear willing to take the risk for more services at reduced costs.
Wireless carriers employ IP for much of their networks. Increasingly, customers with VoIP phones are using them with laptops to connect wirelessly from anywhere.
The Federal Communications Commission in February 2004 classified peer-to-peer VoIP as an information service and began examining whether VoIP that touches the public switched telephone network also should be classified as an information service. While that piece of the project has not yet been completed, the FCC in May said VoIP providers had until the end of November to offer enhanced 911-location and callback number-to their customers.
Sununu said he expects VoIP providers will file waivers from the rules “because not everyone offering VoIP will be 100-percent compliant.”
While the focus of the VoIP E-911 debate has been on the providers, professor Henning Schulzrinne, chairman of the Computer Science Department at Columbia University, said the focus should be on the 911 system.
“The existing 911 system has reached the end of its useful technical life. It is based on CAMA trunks that were outdated 10 or 20 years ago,” said Schulzrinne. “We have the first opportunity for a new, improved and less-costly emergency system. We need to resist what we did with wireless, which is to add chewing gum and bailing wire to an existing unworkable system.”
Schulzrinne said it is not VoIP technology per se that needs a different 911 system but rather, “VoIP is the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
One of the major problems with the FCC’s approach of regulating the VoIP providers is that Internet service providers know where the user actually is based on the IP address.
“The largest infrastructure changes may be to the ISPs, which may or may not provide voice services,” said Schulzrinne.
“The problem is the ISP knows where you are but doesn’t know you are making an emergency call. The voice service provider knows you are making an emergency call but doesn’t know where you are, so these two must cooperate.”
