In the same FCC meeting yesterday in which opening the “white spaces” was approved, there was supposed to be a discussion of changing the rate structure that the telephone companies use for passing calls to each other. This is an amazingly complex and highly regulated business, and what makes it even more complicated is the fact that some of the terminology on which the regulatory structure rests is meaningless in the context of new technology. In the end the FCC just decided to do nothing for the time being.

Saul Hansell of the New York Times does as good a job explaining some of the issues as is humanly possible, I think.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 at 4:14 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous, The role of government—laws and regulations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.