Duane,
In my very humble, yet experienced, opinion, as long as any ITSP carrier (or call them what may) is dependent on the local operating company (the LEC) for the origination and/or termination of a phone-to-phone (or whatever) call, they are going to pay the access charges. Substituting traditional PCM trunks with thos which happen to be using VoIP trunks, or AM trunks, or any form of modulation, or even hard wires between ITSP POPs, does not an end-to-end Internet service make.
The way I see it, even if the call traverses the public Internet, the call is liable if it originates or terminates on a LEC's switch. When you use a LEC's switch, you most often use their local loops and directory databases (and pointers), and in most instances you use their links and access arrangements to an SS7 network service provider as well. Getting pre-subscribed, for example, to an ITSP for 1+VoIP, would require these very measures. None of these are free to the LEC. Not hardly. OK, I can hear it already... they are not as costly as the charges assessed for same, but that is not the issue here. The issue is whether this rules applies to the ITSPs as it applies to normal IXCs. I think that the early leaders in this field have known this along. Chutzpa, and some false signs of hope from the governement, are the only explanations that I can think of that have let this situation get this far.
Some private line access arrangements a la CLEC links to the VoIP carrier may qualify for exemption, if both ends are accessed in this manner, but that is not a universally practical arrangement... not when we are talking about 'any' phone to 'any' phone. Also, where calls are placed on an enterprise net using PBXs, there should be no problem, IMO, as the regs are now written, as long as the call does not leak off the enterprise net onto the public network. But, let's get serious... this has been one of those unenforceable and unregulable issues for eons.
Again, an "ITSP" that uses the POTS network to hop onto and hop off of the internet, or even a dedicated IP Backbone owned and operated by the carrier independent of the public Internet, will be liable if the ruling is brought to a head. In fact, there is no reason why, from a technical perspective, they shouldn't be now! This doesn't mean that I am in agreement fully with such a ruling or with the rules as they now stand. Rather, it is merely my interpretation of the rules in question, as they now stand, and as they may be reiterated, shortly.
I was asked today by an executive of a major router vendor if I thought VoIP would make it. My answer was that this is not a simple matter that can be covered in a single discussion. I'm sure that this was not what he wanted to hear, since he had just dropped off his company's white paper on SS7 integration to one of my clients.
FWIW,
Frank Coluccio |
