Last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) formally kicked off a process that will eventually decide how Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) should be regulated, if at all. For a recap of the two-day forum, Networking Pipeline caught up with Jeff Campbell, director of worldwide government affairs at Cisco Systems, to get his take on the event, as well as Cisco's position on VoIP regulation.
Networking Pipeline: Since this is a phone interview, it would only be appropriate to conduct it using VoIP...
Jeff Campbell: Well, we are from this end, since Cisco uses IP phones.
Networking Pipeline: Since you were there, can you quickly summarize the forum?
Campbell: It was a formal beginning to an FCC process to address the [regulation] issues. Most of the big questions were raised, and I think it's safe to say the FCC will, in the relatively near future, talk about rule-making. But it's just the start of the process, and it may take as long as a year to complete.