Powell to SBC: Don't Overcharge VoIP

This year SBC introduced a voice-over-IP termination service, called TipTOP. The issue reportedly has been that SBC is being very aggressive in state arbitrations, asking the VoIP services pay standard "access charges," which supposedly do not apply to "data" services, such as voice over IP, rather than "reciprocal compensation," which is what applies today.

(Access fees are what a long-distance provider pays to terminate traffic with the local phone company. Reciprocal compensation, on the other hand, is what a local phone company, such as a CLEC, pays another local phone company to terminate traffic. Access fees are charged at a higher rate, about .6 cents per minute, compared to less than a third of that amount for reciprocal compensation.)

Drawing a Line
Using unusually strong language, Powell reminds SBC, "I am committed to ensuring that this commission avoids any action that might slow the IP-services revolution."

Powell adds, "Should we conclude that this tariff is being used to justify the imposition of traditional tariffed access charges on VoIP providers or to discriminate against SBC's competitors, the commission will take appropriate action including, but not limited to, initiating an investigation of SBC's interstate tariff and any other tariff that proposes similar terms. Nothing in this tariff should be interpreted to force a set of compensation relationships on VoIP providers and their connecting carriers either at this commission or in other venues."

The FCC is scheduled to address broad issues of VoIP regulation in the new year, including access charges and reciprocal compensation. There are three proceedings that raise issues about the charges applicable to VoIP services: a petition filed by Level 3 Communications Inc., the FCC's intercarrier compensation proceeding and a rule-making on IP- enabled services.

"We are in the process of trying to figure out what the appropriate intercarrier compensation regime should be," says FCC spokesperson Mark Wigfield. "We wanted to make sure, as they {SBC} file this tariff, that their tariff does not impede our effort to look at this comprehensively."