The Internet Tax May Be Creeping Up on Us

THE INTERNET TAX MAY BE CREEPING UP ON US
[SOURCE: Jeff Pulver]
[Commentary] I have repeatedly called for VoIP providers that offer services intended to be nothing more than a replacement for plain old telephone service to step up to the plate and meet the regulatory obligations of traditional telephony providers. In fact, the Voice on the Net Coalition, the voice for the VoIP industry in the US, has also supported meeting the basic economic and regulatory obligations that ensure a robust and ubiquitous public switched network. For the record, however, I have to reiterate that many, if not all, of the current regulations do not make sense in a world where voice is an application riding on top of broadband transmission services. The current Universal Service Fund ("USF") contribution methodology, which requires service providers to determine whether its revenues are derived from intrastate vs. interstate or international services, telecom services vs. information services, or even customer premises equipment ("CPE"), is one of the many regulatory schemes that no longer work in a geographically irrelevant, converged, IP-enabled world. As the VON Coalition has repeated in many of its filings over the last few days, applying USF assessments on VoIP services that act like replacement phone services is not a matter of if or when, but a question of how. To this end, while I do support the assessment of USF contributions on the companies that the FCC refers to as "interconnected" VoIP providers, first, the FCC must reform the assessment mechanisms so that VoIP consumers are not hit with a discriminatory, inequitable, and arbitrary tax simply because they have chosen to utilize advanced IP technology to make voice calls, as opposed to wireless or circuit switched services. Chairman Martin has called for a new contribution system based on working telephone numbers. This is just one better way of ensuring that the transmission service (or the connection) contributes, rather than the application.
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