FCC looking to an all IP communications future

Strong words coming from FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski: "USF is a multibillion-dollar annual fund that continues to support yesterday’s communications infrastructure." So what is he planning to shift the Universal Service Fund's billion dollar budget towards? VoIP, of course. Well that and all other forms of IP communications.

The PSTN may be here for a long time, but the FCC wants to push out broadband communications into those last miles so that no one is left behind. In a notice to the industry asking for feedback on how to lay the regulatory groundwork for an all-IP communications network, the FCC has made it clear that one day our communications will be all IP.

The notice compared the process to switching from analog cell phone service to digital and from analog TV to digital. GigaOM muses that the transition to IP communications will be much more disruptive than these examples. Claiming that the fate of copper is limited, GigaOM sees FCC cutoff dates and a scramble to update older households to ensure access to IP-based calling.

The FCC said it will use industry comments to create an official Notice of Inquiry (NOI) and then develop that into government policy under the Broadband Stimulus bill.

For more:
- FierceTelecom has more here
- read this GigaOM blog post

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