[Asterisk-Users] Re: Is this good or bad

[Thomas Eugene Hayden]

After speaking with an employee at the Michigan Public Sevice Commission, 
I'm under the impression that initially this is a good thing, but long term 
a very bad thing.  The FCC strictly regulates ILECs and CLECs, and requires 
ILECs to unbundle their lines and let CLECs lease them at a reasonable rate. 
As far as I know, this only applies to analog telephony.  Therefore, 
longterm, the big telcos such as SBC, Quest, Bell South, and Verizon are 
going to start shifting their lines to pure IP - thus they don't have to 
unbundle any network elements for the CLECs.  This will basically drive any 
of the CLECs who don't have an infastructure in place out of business 
because the ILEC will have zero requirements to share any network elements. 

Eventually, companies like Vonage are going to get shafted because SBC (or 
whomever) can refuse to terminate traffic from them because they will only 
be handling IP traffic and not analog voice.  The FCC won't be able to do 
anything and neither will any state regulatory bodies because both have 
pledged to have zero regulation in IP traffic. 

I'm not an attorney, just a college student studying telecom, so take my 
opinion for what it's worth... 

--
tom 

james writes: 

The FCC is now the governing body for Internet based telephony in the U.S. Vonage considers this a win, but now they are officially regulated. 

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