The FCC recently took a small step to ensure that VoIP continues to develop into a viable competitor to PSTN voice services. In response to a petition from Time Warner Cable, the FCC held that nationwide wholesale VoIP termination services offered by the likes of Level 3 and MCI are telecommunications services.
This means that rural incumbent carriers, many of whom have been refusing to interconnect with and terminate traffic for wholesale networks providing VOIP services to other service providers, must now do so under Section 251 (a) and (b) of the Communications Act. While this FCC decision is not a surprise, it does remove a question mark and clarifies that VoIP providers will be able to provide nationwide service to their customers by using wholesale termination services for coverage of areas where they do not have facilities or interconnection agreements.
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