Regulating IP Communications is Like Fighting the Last War

It often is said that generals always are ready to fight the last war, especially if it was a lost war. It's catchy, and probably wrong, but you get the point: it is awfully easy to view the future through the lens of the past.

So it also is easy to argue that it is time to stop obsessing over legacy voice regulation at a time when that part of the business actually is "dying."

More than 40 percent of U.S. homes have abandoned their landline phone service in favor of cable, VoIP and mobile.

By the end of 2013, according to USTelecom, less than 30 percent of U.S. homes will rely on a wired connection as their primary telephone service. 

Mobile service providers already are trying to get ahead of the game as well. AT&T, Verizon Wireless (and likely T-Mobile USA, soon) already have moved to a preferred retail packaging that bundles unlimited domestic calling and text messaging with a variable bucket of data usage that drives most of the account revenue.

They are doing so to protect voice and messaging revenues that are expected to begin a long, steady decline.

That is not to say every actor in the communications ecosystem will be happy about a rapid transition to all-IP communications and a new regulatory framework.

But the point is clear enough: we would be wasting time heavily regulating a service that is in"sunset" mode. We essentially made a similar, if smaller mistake when creating the Telecommunications act of 1996. The whole idea was to shake up the voice business.

The whole effort missed the fact that the Internet, mobile and IP communications were about to displace huge chunks of the old voice business.  The principle should now be clear: don't spend lots of time and effort "regulating" a service that is not driving communications in the 21st century.