Next year may be a big one for regulation of VOIP in the U.S., according to some speakers at the Voice on the Net (VON) conference in Santa Clara, California this week. Several petitions to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to make decisions on the services are currently pending, and some of them legally should be decided within 12 to 15 months, according to Julie Veach, an assistant chief in the FCC"s wireline competition bureau, who addressed a one-day policy summit at VON.
However, major federal policy decisions on VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) probably won"t be made until at least after the November election, with the uncertainty of a possible administration change looming, says Blair Levin, a managing director at financial services company Legg Mason and a former FCC official.