The European Commission has said that the delivery of voice
services on the internet should not be covered by the regulatory
regime for voice telephony because the internet services are not
yet up to the standard of voice telephony services. The
announcement this month confirms and updates a regulatory ruling
made in 1998 on VoIP (Voice Over the Internet Protocol).
VoIP means sending voice information in digital form in discrete
packets rather than in the traditional protocols of the public
telephone network. A major advantage of VoIP telephony is that it
avoids the charges of ordinary telephone services.
The Commission said that VoIP services usually do not meet each
of the conditions for the definition of voice telephony in a 1990
"services" Directive and should therefore not be treated as such
from a regulatory point of view.
In some cases, VoIP services might meet all the conditions laid
down in the 1990 Directive. Certain internet telephony providers
may qualify as providers of voice telephony, and therefore be
subject to the regulatory regime applicable to voice telephony, as
soon as they offer a quality of service equivalent to that of
traditional voice telephony.
A public consultation held last Summer highlighted the need for
clarifications on a number of points. The new communication from
the Commission therefore clarifies the differences between voice
over internet protocol and voice over the internet. It states, as a
consequence of this distinction, that the conveyance of voice
signals over dedicated private networks using the internet protocol
is likely to produce a level of service comparable with that of
voice delivered over conventional telephony networks.
The Commission said that internet telephony will only be defined
as voice telephony and therefore be subject to standard voice
telephony regulation if and when all the following conditions from
the 1990 Directive are met:
- It is offered to the public commercially;
- The service is provided to and from public switched network
termination points on the fixed telephony network; and
- It involves direct transport and speech in real time.
The Commission said the quality and reliability offered by
already marketed services still do not meet the expectations of
mainstream consumers. It acknowledged that sophisticated products
tailored to the needs of professional users have been released, but
as they usually combine voice features with other elements (e.g.
text and image) it said that they cannot be assimilated with
genuine voice telephony.
