What Do Pizza Delivery and Information Services Have in Common? Lessons from Recent Judicial and Regulatory Struggles with Convergence

Frieden, Rob, "What Do Pizza Delivery and Information Services Have in Common? Lessons from Recent Judicial and Regulatory Struggles with Convergence" (October 2005).

Abstract:

Congressionally crafted definitions of cable, telecommunications and information services used by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to make key policy and regulatory decisions no longer provide clear direction in light of technological and marketplace convergence. Converged services may incorporate two or more regulatory classifications, because software and other applications can ride on top of basic digital bitstream transmission.

The duty to shoehorn all services into one category and concern about regulatory parity have forced the FCC to make decisions that ignore or subordinate the fact that telecommunications services provide access to Internet content. Recently the FCC reclassified telephone company provided Digital Subscriber Link service as an information service, like cable modem Internet access, despite having previously identified it as a telecommunications service.

Adding to the confusion, the Supreme Court in National Cable & Telecommunications Association v. Brand X Internet Services, 545 U.S., 125 S.Ct. 2688, slip op. 04-277 (June 27, 2005), struggled with how to conceptualize convergence through warring analogies that compared Internet access with packaged services in automobile manufacturing, pet stores and pizzerias.

This article offers proposals for revising the Communications Act of 1934 to promote full and fair competition when telecommunications and information services converge. The article will consider the viability of antitrust scrutiny in lieu of ex ante, service specific regulation, and initiatives in the European Union that rely on structural safeguards that the FCC first used, but later abandoned. Additionally the article will recommend that legislatures and regulators combine greater granularity and specificity in service definitions with more timely, certain and calibrated assessment of market dominance and market failure.

Facts on voip

• VoIP phone calls (even international) are widely regarded as free. While there is a cost for their Internet service, using VoIP over this service usually does not involve any extra charges, so the users view the calls as free.
• Although few office environments and even fewer homes use a pure VoIP infrastructure, telecommunications providers routinely use IP telephony, often over a dedicated IP network, to connect switching stations, converting voice signals to IP packets and back.
• VoIP phone calls (even international) are widely regarded as free. While there is a cost for their Internet service, using VoIP over this service usually does not involve any extra charges, so the users view the calls as free.

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