Fergie's Tech Blog

FCC Rules That Rural Carriers Must Connect Internet Calls

A Bloomberg News article by Molly Peterson, via The Washington Post, reports that:

Rural telephone companies must allow carriers such as Verizon Communications to use local lines to connect Internet-based calls, U.S. regulators said yesterday [Thursday, 1 March 2007].

The Federal Communications Commission ruling, in granting a petition filed by Time Warner Cable, "will enhance consumers' choice for phone service by making clear that cable and other [Internet phone] providers must be . . . allowed to put calls through to other phone networks," FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin said in an e-mailed statement.

AT&T and Verizon, the two biggest U.S. phone companies, supported Time Warner Cable's petition.

The FCC order overrides rulings by state regulators in South Carolina and Nebraska that barred certain carriers from connecting calls using voice-over-Internet protocol, or VOIP, to traditional local phone lines. The South Carolina regulators said Verizon had no right to route Internet-based phone calls through lines owned by rural-phone companies as part of a wholesale service it sells to Time Warner Cable, a unit of Time Warner Inc.

posted by Fergie @ 3/01/2007 08:58:00 PM