Why stovepipe regulation no longer works: an essay on the need for a new market-oriented communications policy.

(4.) Christopher Yoo has put it this way: "Gone are the days in which each communications technology could be regarded as occupying a separate regulatory silo. The impending shift of all networks to packet-switched technologies promises to complete the collapse of any remaining attempt to base regulation on differences in the means of transmission." Yoo, supra note 2, at 714 (citation omitted).

(5.) 47 U.S.C. [section] 153(43) (2000).

(6.) [section] 153(20).

(7.) [section] 153(43).

(8.) [section] 153(20). The definitions found in the 1996 Act of "telecommunications" and "information service" essentially track the "basic" and "enhanced" services definitions developed in the Federal Communication Commission's ("FCC") landmark Computer H proceeding to distinguish between regulated transmission services and unregulated online services employing computer processing. Second Computer Inquiry, Final Decision, 77 F.C.C.2d 384 (1980) [hereinafter Computer II]. They have been interpreted by the FCC to extend essentially to the same functions so that all of the services the FCC previously considered to be "enhanced services" are "information services." See Implementation of Non-Accounting Safeguards of Sections 271 and 272 of the Communications Act of 1934 as amended, First Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rule Making, 11 F.C.C.R. 21905, paras. 102-04 (1996).

(9.) WEBSTER'S THIRD NEW INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY 1420 (1993).

(10.) Randolph J. May, The Metaphysics of VoIP, Jan. 5, 2004, CNET NEWS, http://news.com.com/The+metaphysics+of+VoIP/2010-7352_3-5134896.html. For anyone interested in immersing him or herself more deeply in communications law metaphysics, I suggest reading some of the orders in the FCC's almost decade-long effort to settle on a classification of protocol processing and protocol conversion services. To begin such a metaphysical feast, sample Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service, Report to Congress, 13 F.C.C.R. 11501, paras. 49-52 (1998) [hereinafter Federal-State Joint Board] (dealing with the struggle to classify services under the 1996 Act's definitions and the FCC's Computer H regime).

(11.) 47 U.S.C. [section] 153(27).

(12.) 47 U.S.C. [section] 522(6) (2000).

(13.) [section] 153(6).

(14.) Yoo, supra note 2, at 714.

(15.) Computer II, supra note 8.

(16.) See id. and accompanying text.

(17.) Id. paras. 95-97.

(18.) Id. para. 114; see also IP-Enabled Services, Notice of Proposed Rule Making, 19 F.C.C.R. 4863, para. 25 (2004) [hereinafter IP-Enabled Services] ("Providers of 'basic' services were subjected to common carrier regulation under Title II of the Act.... [T]he Commission declined to treat providers of enhanced services as 'common carriers' subject to regulation under Title II of the Act.") (citations omitted).

(19.) See Computer II, supra note 8, para. 101; Speta, supra note 2, at 1084.

(20.) Inquiry Concerning High-Speed Access to the Internet Over Cable and Other Facilities, Declaratory Ruling and Notice of Proposed Rule Making, 17 F.C.C.R. 4798 (2002), vacated in part and remanded sub nom. Brand X Internet Servs. v. FCC, 345 F. 3d 1120 (9th Cir. 2003), rev'd and remanded, National Cable & Telecomm. Ass'n. v. Brand X Internet Servs., Nos. 04-277 and 04-281, 2005 U.S. LEXIS 5018 (June 27, 2005), 125 S.Ct. 2688 (2005) [hereinafter Brand X].

(21.) See Appropriate Framework for Broadband Access to Internet Over Wireline Facilities, Report and Order and Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, 20 F.C.C.R. (forthcoming 2006), 236 Comm. Reg. (P & F) 944 (2005).

(22.) Petition for Declaratory Ruling that Pulver.com's Free World Dialup is Neither Telecomm. Nor a Telecomm. Serv., Memorandum Opinion and Order, 19 F.C.C.R. 3307 (2004), available at http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-04-27A1.pdf [hereinafter Pulver.com Petition].

(23.) Id. para. 11 (citing 47 U.S.C. [section] 153(20)).

(24.) Id. para. 19.

(25.) Vonage Home Page, http://www.vonage.com.

(26.) Vonage Holdings Corp. Petition for Declaratory Ruling Concerning an Order of the Minn. Pub. Utils. Comm'n, Memorandum Opinion and Order, 10 F.C.C.R. 22,404 (2004), available at http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-04-267A1.pdf [hereinafter Vonage Petition].

(27.) Id. para. 4.

(28.) IP-Enabled Services, supra note 18, para. 16.

(29.) Id.

(30.) See Press Release, FCC, Federal Communications Commission Releases Data on High-Speed Internet Access Services (July 7, 2005) (explaining that the number of high-speed lines in service at the end of 2004 reported to be 37.9 million).

(31.) net2phone, 2005 Annual Report 3 (2005), available at http://web.net2phone.com/about/investor/2005AR.pdf.

(32.) See Pulver.com Petition, supra note 22, para. 19 and accompanying text.

(33.) See Vonage Petition, supra note 26, para. 4.

(34.) See IP-Enabled Services, supra note 18, paras. 24-25.

(35.) Id. para. 26.

(36.) See generally Federal-State Joint Board, supra note 10; see also IP-Enabled Services, supra note 18, paras. 63-66.

(37.) See IP-Enabled Services, supra note 18, paras. 26, 45-60.

(38.) See 47 U.S.C. [subsection] 541, 542 (2000) (authorizing local governments to award franchises for the provision of cable service and to require payment of franchise fees).

(39.) See National Telecommunications and Information Administration, 50-State Survey of Rights-of-Way Statutes, http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/staterow/rowtableexcel.htm.

(40.) See Press Release, FCC, supra note 30.

(41.) See supra notes 20-21 and accompanying text.

(42.) See Whitt, supra note 2, at 591.

(43.) Id. at 592.

(44.) Id.

(45.) Id.

(46.) Id. at 587.

(47.) What is also needed is a slimmer, more efficient, and more accountable regulatory agency with jurisdiction over communications, in other words, a transformed and reformed FCC. But that is another story unto itself. See Randolph J. May, The FCC's Tumultuous Year 2003: An Essay on an Opportunity for Institutional Agency Reform, 56 ADMIN. L. REV. 1307 (2004).

Randolph J. May, Randolph J. May is Senior Fellow and Director of Communications Policy Studies at The Progress and Freedom Foundation, Washington, D.C.