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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (2331)	11/16/1998 10:17:00 AM
From: WTC	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

The Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), after passage by Congress in 1995, is working its way finally through a particularly heated FCC Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking process (CC Docket 97-213, released November 5, 1998). This is the law that requires and to some possible extent reimburses telecommunications carriers for designing and modifying their digital networks so as to permit lawful wiretaps. In the FNPRM, the FBI/DoJ are taking an especially hard line that they demand several arcane and perhaps relatively difficult law enforcement access modalities to public networks that are not part of the TIA-developed industry consensus (J-STC-025) submitted to the FCC as a proposed set of public network accommodations to meet the requirements of CALEA. This is all pretty ho-hum until one starts to think of the potential implications for new telecommunications entrants, especially those implementing VoIP, who fairly clearly appear to be subject to CALEA requirements. I have not seen anything written or posted here on the probable impact on costs or timing of rollout for voice services planned for introduction or significant expansion between now and June, 2000, the date when networks must have implemented back-doors for law enforcement or be subject to legal sanction. It is not a foregone conclusion that packet networks carrying voice would be subject to all the CALEA requirements, but the FCC is certainly leaning that way (Para 58-65), subject to development of a fuller record for rule making. Perhaps that is why this may have missed the cable company and CLEC radar screens, if it has indeed been overlooked as a factor in their network planning. A recent Justice Department decision seems to make it very difficult for any services entrant post 1995 to claim and be paid any government reimbursement for their incurred CALEA costs. That could be a double hit for the CLECs and cable companies if they find they are subject to all the network modification requirements but no reimbursements to defray their costs. The pre-1995 network operators can not afford to gloat about that, though -- none of the $500 million that Congress anticipated would be spent on ILEC, IXC, et.al., reimbursements has actually been appropriated by Congress, so the checks are not even in the mail for them. The $100 million that has been appropriated seems to be getting used to fight the carriers to get them to give law enforcement better (and more expensive to deliver) hooks into the digital networks. Any insight on the thread as to what the CLECs, cable companies with voice services plans, and even ISPs offering VoIP (i.e., "providers of telecommunications services") are thinking as to their exposure under CALEA? Are CALEA implementation requirements shaping up to be a skunk at the garden party for new telecommunications services entrants?