re: FCC & Internet phones

[Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>]

At 12:12 PM 3/9/96 -0500, Padgett Peterson wrote:
>  >"Long-Distance Dueling. Free Dialing Via Internet Faces a Challenge From
>  >Small Phone Firms." 
>  You seem to forget that the Internet is just about the *only* electronic 
>  communications media not controlled/licensed by the FCC in the US. The 
>  FCC also prohibits use of cryptography by those with amateur licenses.

Oh, we remember it :-).  But actually, large chunks of the Internet's
facilities _are_ on controlled or semi-controlled media, such as 
frame relay (which the Feds just insisted had to be tariffed) or
local private-line (which is often regulated by state PUCs.)
But in those cases, the regulation is at the price/quantity/schedule
layer, rather than the content layer.

And according to someone I talked to recently, the Network Access Points,
MAE-East/West, (though not CIX), are still NSF-funded, even though they're
often built
and run by folks like PacBell - I'd thought we'd gotten rid of those guys
a couple of years ago except for the NIC and Internic.
#--
#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 pager 408-787-1281
# "At year's end, however, new government limits on Internet access threatened
# to halt the growth of Internet use.  [...] Government control of news media 
# generally continues to depend on self-censorship to regulate political and
# social content, but the authorities also consistently penalize those who
# exceed the permissable."  - US government statement on China...