As unrecognizable as VoIP might be as a term today, it will be on everyone’s lips, and in everyone’s homes, tomorrow – if regulators are forced to keep their acquisitive hands off of it.
Voice over Internet Protocol – making telephone calls over the Internet – is a fledgling industry, a small sliver of the telephone service market. But it promises to save consumers money and offers useful features at a reasonable cost. VoIP can do this because it bypasses the outmoded communications regulatory regime that unnecessarily adds costs to other telecommunications services. Because of its relative freshness, VoIP does not fall into any of the current regulatory classifications and so is flying virtually free.
That flight could be near its end, though. Government rule makers get edgy when the private sector finds ways around their decrees from on high.
Hoping to stave off this regulatory reflex, the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee approved on July 23 the VoIP Regulatory Freedom Act of 2004. The bill, if passed and signed, would exempt VoIP service from state taxes and rules and would place it in a federal regulatory classification that would keep Washington’s rule makers – also known as economy killers – from overburdening an important emerging industry.
It’s not a bill without traps, though. It contains a disappointing amendment that would allow states to continue requiring VoIP providers to hand over cash for state universal service programs. That universal service fee, a needless burdensome leftover from another era, might be a significant tax that could smother the vast potential of VoIP.
In a day when the call for “protecting the public interest” really means “the fear that somewhere, someone or something is going unregulated,” keeping the rule makers’ hands off this fledgling industry won’t be easy. But if we do, we will see just how much difference a little technology freedom can make.