Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) : the dynamics of technology and regulation

"What Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is going to do is start to weaken the foundation of the way we've done things for 100 years...Congress already should be discussing the next telecom bill," said Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Michael Powell in February 2004, before the United States Senate. The objective of this thesis is to study how VoIP challenges the incumbent US telecommunications act. The appearance of VoIP comes at a juncture when telecommunications system has already turned into a large-scale, complex system with multiple, competing infrastructures. VoIP, however, greatly augments the nested complexity by affording a technology that enables multiple architectures and business models for delivering the same voice (and often converged voice and data) service, while remaining agnostic to the underlying infrastructure. The VoIP-enabled architectures have very different capabilities and costs from one another. Many do not - or cannot - support social regulations such as emergency 911, wiretapping and disability access. Most exploit the economic arbitrage opportunities by evading access charges and universal service contributions.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering Systems Division

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Vaishnav, Chintan

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Charles Fine.

• Technology and Policy Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/34533

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/34533