Sununu Calls For New Telecom Bill In 2005

BOSTON -- Senator John Sununu is ready to reload his legislation aimed at simplifying the regulation of Voice over IP, as part of a larger telecom reform bill that he said is planned for next year's new session of Congress.

In his keynote speech Monday at the VON (Voice on the Net) show here, Sununu, R-N.H., said that he and other congressional leaders, including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, are already planning to tackle the thorny issues of telecom regulation with an omnibus-type bill, as soon as this fall's national elections are over.

"We are going to begin writing a new bill in 2005," said Sununu, who earlier this year submitted a bill that sought to streamline potential regulatory restrictions on VoIP, only to watch it get amended to deathin the Senate's commerce committee. While admitting that the opposition interests "are pretty well entrenched," Sununu asserted that telecom reform -- especially on the contentious issues of Universal Service Fund contributions and intercarrier compensation -- is needed sooner, not later.

"This is not something we can spend 10 or 20 years on," Sununu said, speaking of the unrestful situation in telecom regulation that is only being accelerated by disruptive technologies like VoIP. "This [situation] is real today," Sununu said. "There are challenges, but they can and will be overcome in the next two years."

In addition to Stevens and McCain, Sununu said other supporters of new telecom reform regulation include Democratic senators Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey and Maria Cantwell of Washington. "We've built a good bipartisan base," Sununu said. However, there is also resistance from both sides of the aisle to moving quickly on telecom reform. Commerce committee members Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Conrad Burns, R-Mont., both authored amendments that reversed the intention of Sununu's original bill, which Sununu has tabled for the time being.The idea for his VoIP legislation, Sununu said, came out of his fears that there was "growing pressure" to take the old telecom regulatory system and apply it to VoIP. Since the Federal Communications Commission hasn't yet come up with a clear set of rules to describe how VoIP might fit under the existing laws of the Telecom Act of 1996, Sununu said he wanted to help ensure that there were "uniform national standards [for VoIP], so the entire [market] would know the rules of the game."

But his bill's insistence on declaring VoIP free from most state-level regulations -- and its fast-paced delivery in the commerce committee this summer -- pretty much doomed its chances, according to congressional aides close to the proceedings.

"I don't think we were ready to do a [VoIP] bill this fall," said James Assey, Democratic Counsel for the commerce committee. The reluctance to support the Sununu bill directly, Assey said, came in part from senators who "looked into the abyss, and did not know what the structure would be, for things like the Universal Service Fund, coming out the other side."

Assey also said that last-minute changes to Sununu's bill added to the uncertainty that many of the senators harbored. Many members of the commerce committee, he claimed, "were just not able to figure out where they needed to be." A similar legislative effort in the House stalled even earlier in the legislative process. The best VoIP supporters could do there was issue a joint letterurging the FCC to speed up its efforts.

That Dorgan and Burns led the dissent in the Senate committee was not a surprise to insiders, since both senators represent rural states which potentially could lose power and money if VoIP is regulated only at a federal level. Sununu called rural state telecom regulators "the single biggest hurdle we have" in pursuing telecom reform, along with other entrenched incumbents like the RBOCs, who stand to lose market share should VoIP startups gain traction."Rural providers and co-ops are in a difficult place right now, because 70 to 90 percent of their revenues come from universal service or access charges," Sununu said. "I don't know if that business model is sustainable in the long run."

While there is still plenty of room for regulatory debate on matters such as law enforcement rights and emergency 911 service obligations for VoIP providers, Sununu said that time is of the essence in getting IP regulation done, and done correctly.

"It's easier to act today, before we have entrenched incumbents in the IP space," Sununu said. "We need to set the rules early before there are established positions."

His VoIP legislation, Sununu said, will return as part of the new overall telecom-reform legislation, which will also address issues such as intercarrier compensation for different broadband service types, Universal Service Fund contributions, and wireless spectrum allotments. And even though his first try at a VoIP bill fell flat, Sununu isn't discouraged.

"We built some good momentum, and got people thinking," Sununu said. "In the long run, we'll be successful because consumers will be excited by the opportunities IP communications will bring them." Ultimately, Sununu said, that will make IP communications more important economically and politically to those members of Congress who currently oppose reform.0