Free World Dialup FCC Petition: Update

April 14, 2003 - by:Jeff Pulver

On April 2, 2003 it became clearer that the fight to keep Internet Telephony Regulation Free inside of the United States will continue to be an uphill battle.

For starters, both the States of Michigan and Minnesota filed against the Free World Dialup petition. Their premise seemed a little bit out of the movie "Minority Report." These states joined the list of entities against the FWD petition which today include: BellSouth, SBC, the USTA and FBI/DoJ.

Those in favor of the FWD Petition include: AT&T, Qwest, Worldcom, Global Crossing, Cisco and the EFF.

The FBI/DoJ reply comments prompted some recent news stories, including a story in SecurityFocus posted to: here.

All of the reply comments, including our April 2nd reply, can be read by visiting: http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/comsrch_v2.cgi and entering: 03-45 in the Proceeding Box.

If there are people from either the states of MI or MN who feel FWD should not be regulated in their states at this time, it couldn't hurt if you made this point well known. The Michigan reply was filed by the Michigan Attorney General's office on behalf of the Michigan Public Service Commission and the Minnesota reply was filed by the Minnesota Department of Commerce.

As a side note, special thanks to everyone who reached out in February and made your points with your respective State PUC offices. I heard back during Spring 2003 VON that your voice and actions were noticed by NARUC. Thank you for your support.