Networking Pipeline: And as you've said before, the demand for big broadband already exists.
Hundt: You bet. Now [the question is], who's going to provide it? We have a market structure problem, we've got some regulatory issues about the ability for consumers to buy broadband voice when they want it, instead of circuit-switched voice, which they might not want. Because when you buy broadband voice you're going to want to phone somebody on a circuit network, and you're not going to want the regulators to say, "to do that, you've got to pay access fees." You want to make a broadband voice phone call at the same charge as if you went to a web page and downloaded text -- which is zero.
So that's a huge regulatory issue. If the regulators say, "well, we sort of want to regulate VoIP," my view is: Be suspicious, be wary, be alarmed, be worried. Because what they should say is, we have no more business interfering with the flow of bits that are voice than we do with the bits that are the picture you sent to somebody to see if you can persuade her to go have a drink with you because you were connected by Match.com. That's personal, and the voice call also ought to be personal.
Networking Pipeline: But it's not that easy -- there are lobbyists, big companies with entrenched positions that stand to lose a lot...
Hundt: It's simple to figure out where you stand. If you really believe that the Internet for economic reasons and for cultural reasons, ought to be the medium that ties our culture together, and creates the web of meaning that gives a purpose to life... if you really believe that, it should be really easy to fly like a hawk over the regulators and say, don't you do that -- don't you have intercarrier charges for connecting between the broadband voice and circuit-switched voice networks. Don't you tell us that people can fiddle around with the software protocols, and make the Internet not really work when it's voice. Don't you tell us that you're going to identify voice packets, and have them carry an extra charge enforced by the government because there's going to be a tax system on voice packets, [something] that you would never enforce on someone downloading packets from Amazon.
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