Rodent Regatta

In a meeting at the FCC today, Jim Crowe of Level 3 Communications urged restraint and (my words) common sense. From Level 3’s press release is this excerpt:

Under federal rules in place today, VOIP traffic is generally classified as an information service and exempted from the access charges imposed on traditional telecommunications services. With VOIP technology, voice signals can be digitized, broken down and transmitted as ”packets” over IP networks and are, in essence, indistinguishable from other streams of data traffic.

Some industry participants have argued that access charges should be imposed on VOIP traffic, but Crowe said such a move would be ill-conceived.

”Today we have an irrational patchwork, in which charges vary by type of carrier, type of communication, and type of geography,” he said. ”It’s simply not a sustainable system. The commission should make clear as a matter of national policy that the de facto status quo will exist until inter-carrier compensation is addressed broadly.”