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VOIP: Permission Required?

Members of the ISP-Wireless list discuss a legal grey area concerning the deployment of voice over IP (VOIP) technology. In a regulatory climate hostile to CLECs, many fear that the rules will change.

[June 3, 2002]

On the ISP-Wireless list in May, CE asked,

"Do we have to be licensed by the FCC as a CLEC to offer VoIP telephony?"

A number of respondents suggested that, for now at least, you're free to do whatever you like:

[TG laughed] "Are you kidding? That's the beauty of it! Long live the little guy… at least for the next six months!"

[AM agreed] "My understanding is that you don't have to be a CLEC, since you are transporting IP. However, the Bells said long ago that if they catch you with a VoIP gateway to the PSTN, they will bill you as they would an IXC to terminate a call on their network. The problem is, though, that they have no way of distinguishing a VoIP call from regular IP traffic."

DB offered some advice on how to keep any telephony issues from hitting you directly:

"A low-risk approach is to deploy a network which has the necessary QoS to support VoIP. Then market the ability to run telephony traffic over their connection to your customers, and reference-sell or resell one of the PSTN gateway services (such as Vonage [www.vonage.com], etc.). Then you don't need to mess with any telephony at all, because you're just carrying IP-and at the same time, your customers see your network as the enabling infrastructure for their low-cost supplementary telephone service. This should neatly sidestep all the nasty issues with CLEC status, 911 service, bizarre taxes, lawyers, politicians, and all the other nonsense that comes with telephony service."

Others noted that regulatory issues could well appear sooner rather than later:

[KD warned] "Why would Vonage-or any similar provider-want you to be a reseller of their service? All they'll do is convert your customers to their network: you'll basically have handed them your clients. And on the regulatory side of things, the government is looking into creating a commission for VoIP services: apparently, the LECs are starting to complain. If you want to look at VoIP services, build a business case for it first: it could be an expensive mistake if you don't."

[DB conceded] "I agree about the risks from ILEC interest in this area. It might not even take new commissions or new laws to cause disaster, if someone can be persuaded to read some old regulation in a new way to the benefit of the ILECs."

— End