FCC Recognizes That VoIP Is Not A State Issue
from the took-'em-long-enough dept
As plenty of people expected, the FCC ruled today that VoIP is an interstate service, and thus not subject to regulation at the state level — which should keep a variety of states from imposing expensive, pointless and annoying state regulations on each VoIP provider. The thing is, most people knew the FCC would rule this way, but for months everyone has been sitting around twiddling their thumbs. Furthermore, this ruling still leaves a bunch of wide open questions concerning the regulation of VoIP services. The FCC claims they’ll get around to answering some of those questions “next spring.” While it’s good that the FCC isn’t rushing to any judgments, so far they’ve taken forever to tackle the easy questions and haven’t shown that they’re really ready to come out with a comprehensive plan concerning VoIP regulation. All that’s doing is leaving VoIP providers to wonder if the rules are suddenly going to change next year.