(Las Vegas, NV) A panel of telco, cable, VoIP and regulatory speakers could reach little agreement on how IP-enabled services should be regulated, but the telco and cable executives on the panel wouldn’t rule out that their industries might want to “port-block” IP services someday.
Rick Cimerman, Director of Telecom Policy at the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, said that he could foresee cable operators wanting to block services from riding over their broadband networks if those services “imposed an additional cost” on the networks.
“We end up investing a lot behind the [DSL] connection and a lot of that investment goes to enable BitTorrent or peer to peer file sharing. Someday we might get to the point where we want to block a port,” Jonathan Banks, BellSouth Vice President of Federal, Executive and Regulatory Affairs said.
The prospect that VoIP networks could be blocked from cable or telco broadband systems worries Pulver.com’s General Counsel Jonathan Askin. “What we’ve seen is a remarkable encroachment by the regulatory authorities on IP services. On the flip side, we’ve seen the removal of access regulations on carriers that might serve as gatekeepers.”
Cynthia Brumfield at 6:27 PM|Comments(0)
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