FCC vs. ATT What Does It Mean?

Yesterday the FCC issued a very narrow decision
effecting AT&T (NYSE: T). Given all the hype about VoIP and AT&T’s new service, AT&T CallVantage(sm) Service which is consumer broadband phone service (VoIP), it would be easy to link the FCC’s decision and apply it to AT&T CallVantage.

That would be totally, wrong!

The decision is about AT&T using it’s own IP network for phone to phone calls, as in POTS/PSTN to POTS/PSTN, where at some point the call traffic moves over the AT&T IP network.

However, in the second ruling (the first–was Pulver PC-to-PC) that the FCC has made about VoIP regulation, it would not be hard to fathom that other more impacting regulation could come down the pike. So, while AT&T doesn’t win this round, the ruling does clearly say what traffic the local Bell operators can expect to be able to collect on, and in many ways, what they can’t.