The transition from copper-based telephone systems to IP networks in the US could become swept up in political fallout as the Federal Communications Commission figures out how to regulate such networks in ways that will appease the courts.
A switch to IP-based networks has been progressing for years in the US, but a January ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit calls into doubt the FCC's authority in several areas, such as prohibiting voice-over-IP providers from degrading service or blocking calls from competing carriers, and requiring them to offer service to all customers who want it. And the technological changes are rekindling the debate over whether the FCC as an entity should continue to exist at all, or at the least whether it needs a major transition itself.
The IP transition, combined with the network neutrality ruling, puts several features of the traditional telephone network, long taken for granted by customers, in doubt, said Harold Feld, senior vice president at digital rights group Public Knowledge. After the net neutrality ruling, "the FCC can no longer require VoIP providers to complete phone calls [and] can no longer prohibit VoIP carriers from blocking calls," Feld wrote in a January blog post.
The copper-to-IP "revolution necessitates an equally fundamental transformation of the legacy regulatory framework," AT&T's lawyers wrote in a later FCC filing. "Today's rules were designed for a voice-centric world in which [incumbent carrier] ILECs owned 99 percent of access lines, and there is no rational basis for sustaining them in a world where ILECs have rapidly declining minority market shares and voice is becoming just one applications among many riding over converged, data-centric networks."
