The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

US bill would free VoIP from regulation

Boost for new services

Free whitepaper – Selecting an Industry-Standard Metric for Data Center Efficiency

US Senator John Sununu (Rep. NH) is introducing legislation this week which would exempt VoIP from state laws and most regulation covering traditional voice calls.

The bill defines VoIP as an information service which should be regulated like other Internet services. The bill will also exempt VoIP providers from wiretapping.

The VoIP Regulatory Freedom Act restricts the ability of individual states to tax internet phone calls and restricts what regulation the Federal Communications Commission's freedom to regulate the new services. The FCC began looking at VoIP regulation in February.

The proposed legislation gives the FCC 180 days to propose alternative access fees and a way to deal with universal service fees - the way telcos subsidise phone access in rural and remote areas.

Charles Pickering Jr, a Mississippi Republican, is introducing a similar bill into the House of Representatives.

At&T welcomed both draft laws, desribing them as: "a strong vision for the future". ®

Related stories

Level 3 launches residential VoIP
SA telco says VoIP is illegal
UK VoIP sector gets trade body

Free whitepaper – Power and Cooling Capacity Management for Data Centers

Don’t Miss

Mouse teaserOpenOffice.org pushes gamers' buttons with OOMouse

Retains 'burning hatred' for Microsoft, not Apple

Intel logo teaserBig Iron, big data, big networks, big problems

Interview Intel's Wilf Pinfold talks us through SC09

SpectraLogic logoSpectra launches T-Finity, plans beyond

Aims to outshine Sun

HP LogoHP scores SMB storage hat-trick

Disk, DAT and the other