One of the best things we've had going for us is that so many governments have either ignored the industry's development or been afraid that attempts to impose old-fashioned regulation from the circuit-switched world would kill the development of the Internet in their country. Many countries, however, have sought to ban the deployment of VoIP or have said that they will impose legacy regulation. Now, along comes the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), in many ways a bastion of old-style telecom regulation and an entity that many people fear is trying to regulate the Internet, saying that it is going to convene a World Telecommunication Policy Forum in Geneva on March 7-9, 2001 specifically on the subject of IP Telephony. This is the same organization, dominated by PTTs and legacy telecom regulators, that is considering a proposal at meetings beginning next week in Montreal to require governments to regulate Internet backbone providers and force some backbone and content providers to subsidize certain monopoly carriers. While we may be able to use the March 2001 forum to our benefit, the decision to convene the meeting should be considered a serious threat to boost and accelerate efforts to regulate the VoIP industry.
The forum can be expected to attract government telecom officials from around the world and will result in a report by the ITU Secretary General. Planning for the forum began with a workshop last June that promoted parity in the regulation of IP telephony and circuit-switched telephony. (see http://www.itu.int/osg/sec/spu/ni/iptel/workshop/index.html.)
The Secretary General of the ITU is already directing the creation of a draft of the report, to be circulated beginning November 1, 2000. At the same time, he will be selecting a group of experts to advise on the development of the report and the preparations for the three-day meeting.
The worst case, which has to be a real concern in light of the June workshop, would be that the forum leads to a report that recommends regulation of IP telephony and by implication other Internet services by national administrations and perhaps attempts to create a role for the ITU that is similar to the international accounting rate process.
Our best chance to turn this around is to get actively involved in the planning process and encourage participation in the forum by as many of our allies as possible in the public and private sectors. Your company can participate in the forum if it is a member of the ITU Telecom Sector. I believe that we can expect support from the Clinton Administration and the FCC, but we can't take that for granted.
At this point, I'm working with the Voice on the Net (VON) Coalition to organize industry participation. The first thing we need to do is make sure that the "experts" group includes as many industry representatives and sympathetic government policymakers as possible. That group will be selected in October so we have very little time. We need to get behind a strong group of candidates from as many different countries as possible, including as many from developing countries as possible.
The next thing we'll need to do is work on the draft report, which will be the key document for discussion at the March forum. We need to be sure that appropriate background information and policy options are included in the report.
One of the other key ingredients to the forum will be an initial "Information Day" at which there will be a series of presentations intended to educate those in attendance. If we are willing to commit the resources, Information Day gives us an opportunity to show how Voice over IP contributes to the development of the kind of data networks that most governments are hoping to develop and to describe the valuable services that can be provided using VoIP. Our opponents, of course, will try to portray VoIP as limited to accounting rate arbitrage.
If you or your company can get involved, please contact me, with a copy to the VON Coalition's counsel, Bruce Jacobs. He can be reached at: bruce.jacobs@shawpittman.com.
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