Vonage and other VoIP interests lobbied the FCC...

Vonage and other VoIP interests lobbied the FCC last week. The agency’s proposal for direct access to numbers for interconnected VoIP (iVoIP) providers should be finalized, the company said in-house and external lawyers told FCC officials including General Counsel Jonathan Sallet and Wireline Bureau officials. Such direct access would let iVoIP providers “dramatically expand voluntary IP interconnection arrangements, creating a critical IP interconnection test bed as the Commission considers how to advance the IP transition while protecting the public interest,” said a Vonage filing posted Friday to docket 13-97 (http://bit.ly/1qAUuQc). “Based on its experience seeking IP interconnection with other parties, Vonage expects that a wide array of potential IP interconnection partners would be willing to enter into voluntary IP interconnection agreements with iVoIP providers if the Commission grants those providers direct access to numbers.” With no direct access, iVoIP provider numbers appear to belong to numbering partners, preventing direct routing for IP interconnection, said Vonage. “Direct access will also lower costs, enable innovative and advanced services such as HD voice” and have other positive effects, said the company. It’s among the backers of a petition by the Voice Communication Exchange Committee (also using the VCEX acronym) for the FCC to start an inquiry on HD voice. No filing in the comment cycle on the VCEX petition opposed such an inquiry (CD June 25 p15; June 26 p17; July 10 p5). VCXC founder Dan Berninger and VoIP pioneer Jeff Pulver, both Vonage co-founders, warned the FCC of the consequences of imposing Communications Act Title II rules on broadband Internet access to achieve net neutrality, as an NPRM asks about. (See separate report above in this issue.) “Abandoning” the regulated Title II distinction for telecom and the nonregulated Title I approach for information services for net neutrality authority merits a much closer look and more “extensive evidence of market failure” than exists in the record, said Berninger and Pulver. A VCXC filing on their separate meetings with Commissioner Ajit Pai, an official in the Wireline Bureau and an officials the General Counsel’s office was posted Friday in docket 14-28 (http://bit.ly/1wmOPPb). The role state, telco and VoIP officials see for Title II rules in a transition from circuit-switched to IP phone service depends on how stakeholders would be affected by the IP transition and interconnection, our survey of stakeholders found (CD July 11 p7).