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December 04, 2003

FCC may take action on FWD Petition soon...

...or so I thought.

Shortly after speaking at the NYSSA VoIP event in NYC yesterday, I received a phone call from Howard Buskirk, a reporter from Telecommunications Reports who was attending the ALTS Panel Discussion on VoIP yesterday in Washington, D.C., whose take away from that meeting is that the FCC may rule on both the Free World Dialup Petition and the AT&T Petitions prior to the FCC's issuance of their NPRM in Feburary.

When I heard this I thought this could possibly be great news for FWD and the future since it may clear the path for a clear ruling on the future regulatory treatment of "end-to-end IP."

That was yesterday. This morning, looking back, while it would great if the FCC could rule in front of the NPRM, it is also possible that all that may happen is the FCC may release a short Order with their VoIP NPRM, but all that the Order may only go so far as to reach the jurisdictional question posed by the Vonage Petition (i.e., preempt the state and state clearly that the FCC intends to subsume the field on VoIP issues) and nothing more.

On the plus side, my hope is that with the advent of the FCC taking some action that the States will change their approach to the regulatory treatment of VoIP and in effect will wait for the FCC to rule in this space.

Stay Tuned...

Posted by jeff on December 4, 2003 07:29 AM | Permalink

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