Regulatory Issues of VoIP :: essays research papers

Regulatory issues of VoIPThe federal official Communications Commission (FCC) has worked to create an environment promoting competition and innovation to public assistance consumers. Historically, the FCC has not regulated the meshwork or the services provided over it. On February 12, 2004, the FCC found that an entirely Internet-based VoIP service was an unregulated information service. Currently, the FCC is not regulate VoIP, however there are still major concerns that need to be addressed. There are three main issues that are of the utmost enormousness to the telecommunications industry. The Tax Freedom act, E-911, and Calea are three most imperative issues concerning VoIP. The Internet Tax Freedom Act was authored by Rep. Christopher Cox and Sen. Ron Wyden, and signed into justness on October 21, 1998 by President Bill Clinton. This law bars give tongue to and topical anesthetic governments from taxing Internet access service. In 2003 the House of Representatives sanctio n bill H.R. 49, the Internet Tax Non-Discrimination Act of 2003. This bill would expand and set out permanent a federally imposed moratorium on state and local taxation of sales of Internet access services. States and local governments would be for good prohibited from charging sales taxes on the monthly service charge that households and businesses comport to be able to access the World Wide Web. VoIP rides a delicately line between being a tele promise service and an net profit service. This is due to the fact that a call is initiated from a phone in an analog format, transmitted over the internet in a digital format and finally converted back to analog format typically across the same lines that traditional phones operate on. In addition more states rely on the taxes received from telephone service to run programs to moo income areas. VoIP is seen as threat to these programs because taxes will not be imposed on this service due to current legislative language. Many opponen ts of the non-taxation of VoIP feel that prerogative from taxation is not needed to spur investments in this type of telecommunication. They to a fault feel it singles out one type of telecommunications service for loving interference, which will lead to other types of services asking for similar treatment at the expense of the state and local tax base.E-911 short for raise 911, is a location technology that will enable phones to process 911 destiny calls and enable emergency services to locate the geographic position of the caller. When a person makes a 911 call using a traditional phone with ground wires, the call is routed to the nearest public safety answering efflorescence (PSAP) that then distributes the emergency call to the proper services.