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ATT would like to* offer voice over Internet protocol.  As their service affects the phone system at a few degree, the Federal Communications Commission has announced that ATT’s voice over Internet protocol shall be a regulated service — meaning CALEA, E911, and additional responsibilities have to be met, and permition billings have to be paid.  This appears totally logical with the notion that, someday, electronic mail, instant messaging, and peer-to-peer usually shall be regulated services too.
Here’s the reasoning.  To the extent the coming are rightful of  ATT’s voice over Internet protocol, they are rightful of electronic mail and instant messaging:  the service (1) uses traditional purchaser precedes equipment, (2) originates and terminates on the phone system, and (3) experiences no net protocol conversion and allows no enhanced functionality to end users according to the supplier’s use of internet protocol technology.  Like I realize it, whenever a service Is not “processed” somehow over its transport through the net, it is a telecoms service (that’s what the “enhanced functionality” reference refers to).
Chairman Michael Powell tells that ATT “argues that its service should be privileged from the permition charge regime because it may apply internet protocol in its transport system. . . [Meanwhile] purchasers are in no discernable way receiving the transforming benefits of an IP-enabled service.  In fact, the consumer receives the same plain old phone service.”  He goes on to announce that if the Federal Communications Commission listens to ATT, that would be simply “sanction[ing] regulatory arbitrage and would break down the universal service system virtually overnight.”
The argument about electronic mail and instant messaging (like I dimly understand it’s that consumers are getting the same services they used to beget from Western Union.  No difference.  Certainly, the old telegraph operators aren’t there, and the consumer is doing the typing, meanwhile once the message has been put together it is sent along the same plain old phone lines.  In this aspect, the electronic mail or instant messaging is merely As a telegraph that gets routed along over the phone network.  So electronic mail and instant messaging should be on a level playing area with (now not thought about much) Western Union.
The justification for putting electronic mail and instant messaging on a regulated footing like “just another” internet protocol enabled service is that whenever we do not do this the whole regulatory system shall collapse.  The phone system like we cognize it shall be destroyed.
This rationale is really similar to the broadcast flag reasoning:  whenever we do not make rules for the devices that get, store, and control television broadcasts (and the devices that connect to those devices), the broadcast system as we know it shall be destroyed.The arguments for protective phones are stronger than for protective broadcasts, but they are undeniably alike.  We have to do this, or the American way of life shall be destroyed.  Whenever you argue against this, you are un-American.  As a matter of fact, whenever you argue against this, you are in league with terrorists.