Federal Court Throws Out Minnesota VoIP Regulation

An anonymous reader submits: "Voxilla reports that the FCC will announce Friday that 'a federal court has issued a permanent injunction against a recent ruling by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission to regulate Voice over IP provider Vonage as a telephone company.' This is a significant move towards stopping recent movement by states to regulate VoIP -- most notably, California vs. VoicePulse and Wisconsin vs. Packet8."

Comments

Good or Bad? Can't tell yet.

[mjh]

While I'm glad that the MPUC's decision was thrown out, I don't think we know whether or not this is really good or just a speed bump for the MPUC (and by extension all other PUCs).

The problem is that we don't have the actual court ruling. We know that the court issued a permanant injunction agains the MPUC's ruling, but we don't know why. We don't know if it's been thrown out for procedural problems. If so, then MPUC simply corrects that procedural problem, makes a slightly different ruling that has the same effect. But if the ruling agrees with the VoIP providers as to what they're offering and why it's fundamentally different than what the LECs offer, then it sets a strong precedent and it impacts every PUC in the US.

Unfortunately, we don't know yet. And we won't know until the ruling is released on Oct 10. So while I'm cautiously optimistic, that's just me being hopeful. It's not reflective of any evidence.

Re:What constitutes a telephone company?

[Dun Malg]

What's the reason for regulation of regular telephony companies anyway?

The entire justification for regulation is their monopoly status. Because there is only one set of wires carrying dialtone, and they own it, they are regulated. Wireless carriers aren't regulated-- there's a federal law prohibitting it-- because there's no monopoly of the medium. Regular phone companies are subject to regulation based solely on the fact that they own the copper pair, or are resellers of service on that copper pair. Because VoIP is not dependent on a particular delivery medium, nor tied to a particular physical location of delivery, there's absolutely not justification for state regulation.