IP Convergence: Beyond VoIP, Beyond Cost Savings

In a statement today, the National Cable Telecommunications Association (“NCTA”) said that competition offered by their members could save consumers $60 billion over the next five years. Aside from tooting their own horn, the point of this tantalizing message is that these savings are endangered by incumbent local telephone companies who “have challenged the statutory right of cable voice providers to interconnect directly or indirectly to the public switched network.”

Since Congress is back in session and the Republicans are determined to demonstrate their security credentials in the weeks leading up to the mid-term election, let them prove their bona fides and pass legislation that mandates interconnection for all network operators. Nothing is more crucial to the security of the nation’s telecommunications infrastructure than robust interconnection. In the event of a catastrophic event, there is no substitute for the route diversity, redundancy, and survivability that is only made possible with interconnection. Policy makers should have learned this lesson in the 1988 Hinsdale fire that took out one of Ameritech’s primary tandems on Mother’s Day (historically the busiest calling day of the year) and again after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and again after September 11th.

Incumbent telephone companies cannot be permitted to jeopardize the security and integrity of the nation’s telecommunications infrastructure because of their petty greed and parochial issues. It is poor public policy to force network operators to pay artificially high costs for interconnection in the form of access charges in order to secure the nation’s telecommunications infrastructure. For this reason, Congress should also address inter-carrier compensation.

So if $60 billion in consumer benefit and the security of the nation’s telecommunications infrastructure isn’t enough of a reason to mandate interconnection, then maybe we have the wrong people in Congress.