For the recent decade, the three major long distance carriers, AT&T, MCI, and Sprint, and countless minor carriers have waged a war on price of long distance calls both. In the era of Internet, the world has utilized convenience of the Internet in variety of ways. Nowadays, we can even find web sites for local restaurants and many individuals. In addition to the usage of Internet for advertisement and personal amusement, the Internet technology has grown to develop a voice transmission through via Internet. This technology is not more than a file transfer through Internet. The voice is encoded to a file using a software and decoded back to sound at the other end of the Internet. Using this technology, users can talk to each other if both users have necessary hardware and compatible software. This may seem threatening to current long distance carriers because the software is easy to find from many web sites and many times for free, such as Internet Phone , and the cost of the call is virtually free.
The America's Carriers Telecommunication Association (ACTA) proposed
a petition to the
Federal Communication Commission (FCC).
This petition will ban the sale and provision of all Internet telephony software, such as CoolTalk. Second, the
ACTA's petition will confirm the Commission's authority over interstate and international
telecommunications services through the Internet. Last, it will set up rules to regulate the
use of the Internet for providing telecommunications services. On this matter two
respected organizations, National Telecommunications and Information Administration
(NTIA)
and the Federal Networking Council (FNC), have urged the FCC to reject the
ACTA's petition.
The NTIA is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce which serves as the President's principal voice on both domestic and international telecommunications and information policy-making. According to the NTIA's prediction, telecommunications and information-related industries will account for almost 20 percent of the United States economy's revenue. To this market with a bright future, the NTIA's first mission is to make sure that the United States' continuing leadership role by vigorously pursuing policies to open foreign markets to the United States businesses and by encouraging more competition among domestic telecommunications services and products. The NTIA is attempting to maintain the nation as the leader in world's Information Age by developing pro-investment and pro- competitive policies before the Congress, developing nation and world's information infrastructure, and assisting the United States communities with telecommunications needs.
The NTIA's partner in this rejection of the petition is the Federal Networking
Council (FNC) . The FNC is organized by the National Science and Technology Council's
Committee on Computing, Information and Communications (CCIC) to serve to provide
a forum for networking collaborations among the Federal agencies to meet their research,
education, and operational mission goals. In addition, the NTIA is expected to connect a
gap between the advanced networking technologies being developed by research FNC
agencies and the ultimate acquisition of mature versions of these technologies from the
commercial sector. The FNC defines the Internet as the global information system that:
(i) is logically linked together by a globally unique address space based on the
Internet protocol (IP) or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons;
(ii) is able to support communications using the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons, and/or
other IP-compatible protocols; and
(iii) provides, uses or makes accessible, either publicly or privately, high level
services layered on the communications and related infrastructure described
herein. ["Definition of Internet."]
The NTIA gives a more detailed contradiction to the petition. First, the ACTA says in the petition that distribution of the telecommunications software to be banned and adds that this service should not have been allowed to operate without permission from the FCC. The NTIA points out the flaw of this argument. The telecommunications software distributors, such as the Respondents, are providing the goods, not the service. The Internet companies are only providing the communication linkage between the users, and the users are using telecommunications software, such as CoolTalk, only as a mean of communicating to among the users. In this respect, the telecommunications software serves as another mean of communicating much like using facsimiles or any other enhancement of the existing Internet usage. Both second and third issues are basically requesting the FCC for a more strict regulation of Internet. The ACTA claims in the petition that use of voice telecommunication through Internet will risk the nation's telecommunications industry and maintenance of the nation's telecommunications infrastructure since a long-distance call using Internet voice telecommunications software virtually costs nothing. The NTIA does not oppose this aspect, but claims that this may not be the appropriate time for a stiffer regulation. The Internet is growing 10 to 15 percent each month, however, use of voice telecommunications through Internet is still scarce. The difficulties of using voice telecommunications are necessity of both hardware and compatible software on both party and no assurance that a call will be completed or not interrupted.
The arguments in the ACTA petition for banning distribution of telecommunications software are both weak and not appropriate for the time being. Because regulating the use of Internet telecommunicaions software would slow down the advacement of current technology, it would not be a good idea to regulate it at its early stage like today. Most public is not caught up with this new trend to be threatening to current long distance carriers. Perhaps a better solution would be to allow the technology of the telecommunications in Internet to expand itself more through the public use and when the public use of Internet telecommunications does threaten the market of telecommunication, the FCC or other organizations should take the role of regulating it.
"Internet Phone." http://www.pulver.com/vocaltec/dnload.htm ,
12/3/96
"NTIA Home Page." http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ ,
11/18/96
"Definition of Internet." http://www.fnc.gov/Internet_res.html ,
11/18/96
"FNC Charter." http://www.fnc.gov/FNC_charter.html,
11/18/96
"NTIA Joins the FNC in Opposing the ACTA petition."
http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~cs3604/fall.96/Assignments/IP/IP-
%20%20NTIA%joins%20the%20FNC%20in%20oppo ,
11/18/96
"Netscape Opposition to ACTA Petition." http://www.technologylaw.com/techlaw/acta_comm.html ,
11/18/96
"ACTA PETITION TO THE FCC REGARDING INTERNET TELEPHONY" (no title given in source(head)) http://www.technologylaw.com/techlaw/acta.html ,
12/4/96
"Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Home Page." http://www.fcc.gov/ ,
11/18/1996
"Telecommunications Act of 1996." http://www.fcc.gov/telecom.html,
12/4/1996
Last Updated: 12/4/96
© Jacob Chuh, 1996