Bill Hints At FCC Regulation Of Voice-Over-IP?

Anonymous Coward passed along an interesting bill in the U.S. House which he says will be voted on tomorrow (Tuesday). The original H.R. 1291 limited the FCC's powers. This amendment adds language that could be interpreted to expand the FCC's jurisdiction to include voice-over-IP transmissions. This page, at least, evinces great fear over that possibility. But I don't think that's what it means. Read more...

What pulver.com says is that H.R. 1291 "caves in to the Bell Companies and opens the door for the FCC to regulate and impose access charges on IP voice services." But what does the bill really say?

The original bill prohibits the FCC from taxing service providers by the minute:

"...the Commission shall not impose on any interactive computer service ... or other information service provider any access charge for the support of universal service that is based on a measure of the time that telecommunications services are used in the provision of such interactive computer service or information service."

The amendment, which is what is being protested, changes "interactive computer service or other information service provider" to "Internet access service." But the change that's causing concern is the final paragraph which was added by Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI):

"Nothing in this subsection shall preclude the Commission from imposing access charges on the providers of Internet telephone services, irrespective of the type of customer premises equipment used in connection with such services."

OK, so it's saying that this bill will not prohibit the FCC from regulating voice over IP - but since when does it have that power to begin with?

Does the bill's language give the agency that power? Does it hint that maybe in future the feds will crack down on multiplayer games with voice messaging, or PGPvoice?

Or, is it just, as one slash coder commented, "like telling the FCC they are not prohibited from taxing waffle irons" -- a silly and unnecessary piece of CYA?

I don't think it's either. I spoke with Dave Farber at the FCC, and he indicates the agency is not interested in regulating the internet. It's historically been very hands-off and there's no reason to think that will change. This pending legislation seem to be just Congress's way of saying "we're not ruling anything out" -- it doesn't mean that such regulation is on the horizon. So there's no cause for panic.

Update: CNET's story is the paranoid version; ZDnet's is a little more reasonable.

Legislators should understand bits are bits, ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... and not try to carry forward copper-age legacy concepts into the essentially abstract world of bits. It does not make sense to tax or regulate communication of bits based on content.

VOIP is just one kind of content. If you encrypt the stream before it gets out of your computer, it is indistinguishable from any other encrypted stream, and any reliable protocol can serve as a tunnel for any other.

The only thing that might make sense is to make rules based on QOS (quality of service), because that can be characterized without reference to content (obviously certain content streams need certain levels of QOS, which indirectly would associate QOS-related regulations with such streams, but that doesn't create artificial technology lock-ins -- in fact it would encourage improved codecs, compression, etc.)

But if you make VOIP regulations per se, a stupid waste of time and energy will ensue, and it will be tunneled through something unregulated, until they make rules for that, and on and on.

What we need is legislators who understand that public roads generate more business opportunities and taxes than any toll road, and will move things towards a freely accessible, universal, interoperable, infrastructure of digital communication -- not an archipelago of regulatory islands for telephone, cable, TV, internet, radio, WAP, etc. in an age where all these are basically moving bits.

Why isn't this article on the main page?

[Brazilian Geek]

Hey mamma look! A first post!

... alright, I got that out of my system - now to the complaint...

Why isn't this article on the main page? Come on, I like Jamie's and Cliff's posts but some of them aren't getting the attention they deserve. No, I don't filter out their articles but they still don't show up.

Can anyone tell me why this is happeing?

Who can leverage this?

[Manax]

I just had cable access installed a week or two ago, and I chatted with the guy doing the install regarding voice over IP. He told me that he was so happy with it that he canceled his long distance service.

I think the issue at stake here isn't whether the FCC will jump in on it's own and try to regulate or tax VoIP, but that the big long distance players will make demands regarding "unfair competition" or "theft of service" or "infrastructure failure" or "collapse of civilization" or whatever.

Similarly, the local providers might get involved, in the same way that there had been rumblings around charging for data access through phone lines.

Obviously the local players haven't been able to force the FCC to regulate data access, but now with both the long distance and local providers, that's a lot of money threatened.

If there is a bit of wiggle room, some group of corporations will probably throw their weight behind it and turn into a football field.

I realize that the long distance providers also are providing data access, but I doubt they are enlightened enough to just let go of the voice business and just do data.

Re:Why isn't this article on the main page?

[jamiemccarthy]

"I like Jamie's and Cliff's posts but some of them aren't getting the attention they deserve."

Thanks!

"Can anyone tell me why this is happeing?

Generally, authors decide where their own posts go. I didn't think a "no cause for panic" news story was important enough for the main page.

Jamie McCarthy

Re:Who can leverage this?

[Detritus]

The last time this came up, it wasn't the major carriers that were pushing for access charges. It was the small/medium carriers in ACTA. My guess is that the major carriers figured they would make money either way, whether the call was carried over the traditional network or over IP.

This bill could just be some political pawn

[mr_klaw]

It may be that the amendment to this bill is just an attempt to please some political interest group. No matter how much we despsise them or tell them our perfectly logical arguments, there will always be a "tax the Internet" crowd. This whole thing may just be a way of saying "look! We have the potential to get some money from Internet. Now vote for my stuff!" I don't think that it's likely the FCC will take advantage of this, but it's still disturbing to think that they can. My belief and hope is that the FCC will act like this bill doesn't exist to avoid the riots that charging for Voice over IP services may cause.

H. R. 1291 passed this morning!!

[ZipperMan]

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c106:2:./tem p/~c106Y0ffZH:: It has passed. I hope this is not going to allow taxing of MediaRing or HearMe. I think it is very irrelevent taxing my bandwidth based on how I use it. I don't get taxed on electricity I generate from my wind generator nor does the local electric provider pay taxes purchasing my excess generated power, so just because I get taxed in one way does not mandate that I should in others. Please call your congressman/woman! Complain. You think that the DMCA is a pain in the ass.. Just wait until ISP's have to monitor your usage of bandwidth for preper tax collection or worse... to simply estimate what you used for internet telephony and tax you on that! Does anybody know a Laywer or Laymaker that really "Gets It"? I have yet to meet one. It's too new and evolves too fast, Ma Bell is just trying to keep their monopoly intact selling a product that has near zero cost per minute at higher prices. The tax you pay on the charges for your POTS service are in most cases greater than the actual cost of the service for the line provider. This is bad for consumers, and most likely political with lobbyists smiling and politicians lining their pockets. The phone companies are not the majority of the people they repersent... Business as... -Joe

Re:Who can leverage this?

[Cyberdyne]

Personally, I think ISPs etc. should be subject to the same access charges as long distance operators. However, I don't think this should involve adding per-minute charges to the ISPs - rather, it should involve removing those charges from the LD operators.

At present, long distance operators (inter-exchange carriers - IXCs) pay the local operators (local exchange carriers - LECs) by the minute for using the local lines at each end. That's why you can't get unmetered long distance calls; the IXC is paying your local company a few cents per minute. ISPs, on the other hand, just buy normal local lines - and receive lots of flat-rate local calls on them. IXCs can't do this - they have to pay per minute instead.

Solution: Both ISPs and IXCs should pay a fixed per-line charge, without any time-based ("metered") charges. This way, ISPs can continue offering flat-rate dialup - and IXCs can offer much wider variations in pricing (e.g. $30/month plus 2c/minute, or $0/month plus 10c/minute, etc.)

Would this be taxation without representation?

[MousePotato]

After reading the article I can't help but wonder: does this open up the doors for taxation without representation? Some other things to ponder:
When the FCC finally does (and beleive me they will eventually) tax us on internet use what legal grounds will they have? Is this the legislation they will base the capablilty to tax us on? Will big business once again have pushed Uncle Sam into guarding thier interests and not the peoples interests?They won't be able to tax international members of the net and if they do find a way to do so then what kind of impact will this have on US online businesses? Will this mean an eventual surfing tax or Quake tax (JC i gots me adsl when can talk to my teammates?:) beyond a potential IP phone tax? And what about my quickcam video conferencing? After all they are all IP communications no?They don't provide any real service to the net as a whole so I still see no representation for the potential tax. I am probably wrong but I still have to spout about it. /me scratches head... thought the basic tenets of our democracy were a government for the people by the people (as in not by businesses) where citizens could think and speak freely and not be unjustly taxed... BTW. this article shoulda been posted in the main news as I am sure that /.er's woulda hopped on this!

Re:Hands Off? The FCC? Are you nuts?

[Detritus]

The 56K modem restriction is to prevent crosstalk from excessive power levels.

Perhaps I'm off here..

[Talonius]

But maybe any regulation will be done to corporations who specialize in VoIP over the Internet. Much like making a phone call (corporately speaking) costs me a $0.04 connection charge now, maybe PhoneFree.Com will have to pay the same.

I laugh if they believe they can regulate VoIP in private networks, and that's where I've seen it deployed the most (leased lines).

Although, honestly, with long distance rates where they are, my company just nixed moving to VoIP because of a 5 year return on investment.

(I agree, btw, this should have been on the main page, but perhaps not. The conspiracy theorists may have taken it over. ;))

Re:Hands Off? The FCC? Are you nuts?

[Talonius]

I've always, always wondered about the limitation of 53k on a 56k modem. I've hit that limit, a *lot*, literally connecting at 53,333bps. (I'm a hop, skip, and jump away from the switch, and it's all brand new wire. No DSL though where I'm at right now. Odd, eh? Blame GTE. They suck.)

We're not free here, though. We just have fewer restrictions than everyone else.