Industry group wants FCC to regulate Internet telephony.
Stephen Satchell and H.B.J. Clifford
Beware: An association of long-distance-service resellers wants to keep you from using the Internet to make cheap phone calls.
Today you can make inexpensive long-distance voice calls over the Internet by using software such as Electronic Magic's NetPhone, DSP Group's DSP TrueSpeech, and the University of Illinois' Maven -- but not for long, if ACTA (America's Carriers Telecommunication Association) has anything to say about it. This group of long-distance carriers and resellers has petitioned the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) to designate -- and regulate -- Internet-phone-software developers as telecommunications carriers.
Standard phone service is regulated by the FCC and by individual state PUCs (public-utilities commissions) or similar agencies. In a petition filed on March 8, 1996, with the Policy Division of the Common Carrier Bureau of the FCC, ACTA argues that telephony on the Internet should be regulated in a similar way.
Not surprisingly, money is the central issue. According to ACTA, its 160+ members are "required to pay, directly or indirectly, various fees and charges in order to render their telecommunications service to the public." ACTA's members pass these expenses along to their customers, the upshot being that an average domestic long-distance call costs 22 cents a minute. ACTA claims that the same call made over the Internet via telecom software costs about 3.3 cents a minute.
"ACTA is, in effect, attempting to eliminate outside competition by banning emerging technologies," says Jeff Pulver, chairman of the VON (Voice on the Net) coalition, formed specifically to fight the ACTA petition. So far, at least 75 companies and 400 individuals have joined.
Apart from its overt threat to Internet telephony, the ACTA petition has other, darker implications. Along with the named companies, the petition mentions "other, unnamed providers" of unregulated phone services. "While the ACTA filing directly targets two-way voice communications," says Xing Technologies' president, Howard Gordon, "we expect it's only a matter of time before similar efforts are directed against Internet radio and television broadcasting." In other words, Internet teleconferencing products such as Xing Technologies' StreamWorks, Cornell University's CU-SeeMe, Apple QuickTime Conferencing, and VDOnet's VDOLive may be the next targets.
Tune your favorite Web browser to http://www.von.org/ to get a progress report on the ACTA petition.
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