At 9:37 PM -0400 10/8/05, Christian Kuhtz wrote:

On Oct 8, 2005, at 6:43 PM, John Curran wrote:

...

What I have said that there is *significant* attention to the potential consumer impact of our "non-essential" IP services, and that's not surprising given the historic public policy in this area. I pointed to the bill under draft merely as documentation of this attention and to note that unless there is a radical shift in policy for telecom consumer protections, we are going to see some form of regulation as more voice moves to the Internet.

Perhaps. Your presumption for such prediction is that service will not evolve in a disruptive fashion.

No, my prediction is based solely on the current actions of lawmakers to address the perceived social need of reliable phone service. If laws are passed, it's highly likely that the FCC will regulate accordingly, regardless of how amusing the mapping from regulation to reality turns out. /John