Applying legacy interconnection regulations to IP voice
traffic is not "needed, practical, nor efficient," according to a
white paper from Analysis Mason partner Michael Kende.
The paper concludes that "Internet services themselves
are not just undermining the basis for traditional regulation, but also
providing guidance for how network interconnection is achieved in the absence
of regulation."
AT&T has proposed its own model for guiding that
transition. The telco also asked the FCC to select some of its systems as test
beds for transitioning from legacy circuit-switched to next generation
services, and removing the regs they say encumber that move. Those encumbrances
would include extending interconnection to IP, which AT&T has suggested
would be grafting outmoded rules onto a next-generation technology. Kende
agrees.
The white paper was funded by Verizon, but Kende
says the conclusions were his and arrived at independently. Kende is a former
director of Internet policy analysis at the FCC.
