Federal Appeals Court Sides With VoIP Providers

gollum123 writes "AP reports that the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a ruling by a lower court that A Minnesota agency may not regulate calls through VoIP as it does calls through traditional phone lines. 'The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission had argued that VoIP companies were providing phone-like service and therefore should be regulated as phone companies are. But those businesses said they provide an information service rather than a telecommunications service. This follows the FCC saying that VOIP cannot be regulated using the same rules as traditional phone.'"

Comments

Wiretap

[darth_MALL]

(disclaimer: this is not my area of expertise)
How does this desicion affect the rights of law enforcement to 'tap' VOIP communications? Has it now placed them outside the scope of a traditional wiretap? Does a traditional wiretap now encompass data? If not, Having the FCC and two courts backing this would make it pretty difficult for the feds to work around I think.

This could be a bad thing.

[jacobcaz]

I've run several ISPs over the years and one thing that always was the ISP owners "big stick" over the telcos (both ILEC and CLEC) was the PUC (public utilities council), usually coupled with a local utilities council or other regulatory group (like the IURC in Indiana).

Every time we were jerked around by our ILEC or CLEC providers, we could give the PUC and IURC a call and the problems would usually be solved post haste. A call to our account rep suggesting we would report an incindnet to the PUC would bring swift service indeed.

See, we alone couldn't do anything to SBC/Ameritech or Time Warner Telecommunications (or our other CLECs), but the PUC and IURC could "get their regulatin' on" and slap them around with big fines for not providing the promised service, breaking rate tarriffs, etc.

Sure, you can much more easily choose a different VoIP provider than you can a POTS provider, but how long before market consolidation leaves only one or two real VoIP choices? What happens when they start to pull similar BS that the ILECs and CLECs do but aren't regulated by the FCC?

I'm not generally in favor of governmental regulation, but sometimes a little oversight isn't a bad thing. If they want to act like utilities, let them be treated like utilities since we know the markets will converge and consolidate anyway towards only 1 or 2 big national players.

Re:This could be a bad thing.

[Mattintosh]

The thing is, they're not utilities. They're providers. Utilities maintain wires. The big guys have been protecting their status as both utility and provider for a long time, but VoIP will end that once and for all. SBC will become a line utility, and the ISP will become a VoIP provider. Whether SBC will sell the general public a VoIP service is irrelevant. Someone will, and there will be competition.

Re:Doesn't stop them...

[ReTay]

"and that they have no recourse through the utility commission should it have problems."

But that would be wrong.

I work for a large cable company and we are adding VOIP to our line up as fast as we can provide the guaranteed up times mandated by the government. Like 99.99 uptime and independent power supply and such. And yes if your ticked at the cable company you can call the P.U.C

The funny thing is that so many people hate the phone companies so bad they will snap up the service as fast as it is available. The growth has to be slow to keep the network growing in front of the wave of people who hate phone companies bad enough to do nearly anything to get away from them.
They did it to themselves. Bad customer service is legendary with phone companies.