Technology Transitions Task Force Tries to Understand IP Transition, Balance Competing Interests
ORLANDO, Fla. -- FCC General Counsel Sean Lev shed light on how the agency’s Technology Transitions Policy Task Force operates between its public workshops. At the CompTel convention, the task force chairman discussed the weekly meetings of bureau chiefs, the FCC chief economist, the head of the Office of Engineering and Technology and others. “We're using it as a forum to make sure everyone has a hopefully significant body of knowledge” before making recommendations, Lev said Tuesday: It’s “intended to break down any potential silos” that different bureaus might have jurisdiction over, so everyone knows what’s going on.
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Sometimes people talk about Internet Protocol transition as “a single thing that has one set of consequences,” Lev said. There are at least three different aspects to the transition -- TDM to IP, copper to fiber, and wireline to wireless -- and “all of those have different effects,” he said. That millions of Americans have voluntarily chosen to have a wireless phone is “not a concern to us,” Lev said. “Voluntary choices are generally not a concern to us.” What concerns the FCC, he said, is that the “core principles” of consumer protection, public safety, competition and universal service “don’t deviate based on technology.”
"There are lots of good things that are happening here, and we have no intention of trying to limit that,” Lev said. Some of the changes are good for competitors and incumbents, he said, such as efficiencies the industry can enjoy by using IP networks, and the potential public safety benefits of next-generation technologies. But “the issues are multiple,” he said, such as VoIP interconnection disputes and issues of concern to consumers and those with disabilities. “What we're trying to do is identify all the issues and get the best data possible,” he said: “I'm quite optimistic” the task force can “make progress and figure out the right solution.” What the task force is committed to not do is say “there has been a technology transition so it is per se competitive.”
It’s important to make decisions based on what characteristics of the market actually are, and that’s why it’s so important to gather data, Lev said. “That may mean we get rid of some regulations, that may mean that we amend some regulations, it may mean that new things” get enacted, he continued. The next workshop will be Oct. 15, and will focus on competition issues raised by the transitions from wireline to wireless, and from copper to fiber. Until then, the task force is trying to “digest the comments we've received” in response to its proposal this summer for trials, said Lev.
Senior Vice President-Regulatory Affairs Bob Quinn characterized AT&T’s original request for deregulatory test beds as more of a trial to determine the problems that could arise when the telco switches to new technology than a way to necessarily remove rules. “I don’t think we think of this trial as a deregulatory trial,” Quinn said. “We don’t know what’s going to break when we turn TDM off.”
An important question is whether a particular service should count as an information service or a telecom service, CompTel panelists said. AT&T considers its U-verse service to be an “interstate information service,” Quinn said: “It’s an IP-based voice communications product” that’s bundled with video. That’s “not an irrational position,” said Bill Weber, general counsel at Cbeyond. Weber “personally” thinks U-verse “looks exactly like our service,” which is managed VoIP that doesn’t traverse the public Internet. “I think a managed VoIP service looks much more like a telecommunications service than an information service,” Weber said. But because of “gaps” in public policy today, AT&T can treat it like an information service, he said. It may be time to abandon those distinctions entirely “and come up with something that’s rational,” Weber said.
"Inaction by the FCC” has led to the disparate regulatory treatment for VoIP, Weber said. It’s not like the FCC sat down and said, “How should we treat these things? Let’s have a holistic solution and make that happen,” he said. “Sometimes you have to let technology run and see where it goes.” As managed VoIP now is a mature product, the FCC and the industry need to figure out how to treat it in the future, he said.
Weber thinks of disparate regulatory treatment between technologies by comparing it to electric cars. “Nobody is going around and saying, wow, we need a different road system to carry electric cars,” he said. The situation with wires is the same, he said: TDM and IP packets all travel over the same wires. AT&T’s U-verse uses copper over the last mile as a hybrid loop, kind of like T1 lines, said Weber. Although rest stops on highways needed to change a bit -- electric power in addition to gas -- the highways themselves didn’t need to change, Weber said.
The FCC has made a number of different determinations about the treatment of fiber and other services, and Weber wants to undo a lot of that, Quinn said. “That’s going to be a hard fight, to turn back on the regulatory model that’s been previously established as it relates to fiber and IP-based services.” Ultimately, given the “serious implications,” Quinn said Congress might need to get involved.