Export Compliance Daily is a service of Warren Communications News.

‘There is a psychological barrier that has to be crossed’ in regu...

“There is a psychological barrier that has to be crossed” in regulating IP technologies like VoIP when they involve voice, FCC Wireline Bureau Chief Jeffrey Carlisle told VoIP-industry lawyers and govt. staffers. This barrier is making the states nervous…

Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article

Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.

as the FCC moves to regulate -- or deregulate -- in 2005, said Carlisle, who’s also chmn. of the FCC’s Internet Policy Working Group (IPWG). “It would be very nice if we could get away from the binary world of ‘It’s a telecommunications service,’ to ‘No, it’s an information service,'” he said, suggesting few regulatory restrictions may be recommended when the IPWG sends an order draft to commissioners in April or May: “We're not looking for things to regulate.” Carlisle said the FCC will move forward on clarification of interstate/intrastate and certain IT/telecom distinctions by spring, independent of the Brand X case, which won’t be decided until June -- though he said a slight delay on the final order could emerge from the court decision. Carlisle said USF and E-911 will be the big issues facing a “very tired” FCC which has dealt with 8 years of ironing out the 1996 Telecom Act; he suggested the FCC might be unwilling to make E-911 capability mandatory but said he understood the concerns of parents whose children “might have to call 911” on what appears to them to be a standard telephone.