Saying he wanted to make sure the emerging Internet telephony market would not be stifled, Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell told an industry gathering October 19 that he would seek broad regulatory power for the federal government over Voice-over Internet Protocol.
Powell told the gathering he would introduce a proposal to the full FCC within a month and before a new Congress is sworn in to begin work in January. He also said letting the states regulate VoIP would invite what he called a patchwork of conflicting rules such as those which he said have snarled traditional telephony over several decades.
Letting that happen to Internet telephony, Powell told the conference, "is to dumb down the Internet back to the limited vision of government officials. That would be a tragedy."
Powell said the question of who would get the regulatory supremacy over VoIP could no longer be avoided. "It is very likely that treatment of VOIP will have some of the farthest reaching consequences of anything this commission has done or will do," he told the conference.
But Powell also reiterated his earlier belief that, even if the federal government assumes VoIP jurisdiction, regulation should be as minimal as possible, and that questions about taxing and connecting VoIP to 911 emergency services should fall to Washington because VoIP transcends geography.
Citing a Yankee Group study, Powell said the projection of a million VoIP subscribers in the U.S. by the end of 2004 –over only 131,000 in 2003 – shows VoIP has lit "a fire under a stalled and depressed industry," alluding to landline phone carriers.
His proclamation came at a time when Republican members of Congress have prodded the FCC to take action on VoIP jurisdiction and a fortnight before a presidential election whose results could, in theory, cost Powell his chairmanship. Himself a Republican, Powell has been an FCC member since his appointment by then-President Bill Clinton in 1997, becoming chairman when President Bush assumed office.
