F.C.C. Chairman Calls for Transforming the Technology Used by Phone Systems
WASHINGTON — Americans could soon be one step closer to getting that videophone they were promised in the 1960s. — The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission said on Tuesday that the agency would begin …
Context & Ripple Effects
The FCC's newly installed chairman is framing a rewrite of the phone network itself: the agency will begin moving American phone systems off their legacy technology, dangling the videophone 'promised in the 1960s' as shorthand for what an internet-protocol network could deliver. The move extends groundwork the commission laid earlier — its 2011 plan to let 911 accept texts and video only made sense if the network could eventually carry more than voice calls.
First-order effects
- Carriers gain a regulator-sanctioned path to retire circuit-switched infrastructure and run phone service over IP networks, with the FCC — not the carriers unilaterally — setting the terms of the transition.
- Households and businesses still on legacy copper lines become the population over which the transition is tested, since every migration decision now runs through an FCC process rather than a carrier's own timetable.
Second-order effects
- Emergency calling gets pulled along with the network: the text-and-video 911 capabilities the FCC outlined in 2011 acquire a delivery mechanism once the underlying system is rebuilt for IP.
- Equipment vendors and network operators face a fork between maintaining two parallel networks during the transition and accelerating full cutover, which reshapes capital spending across the telecom supply chain.
Third-order effects
- If the FCC follows through, the century-old regulatory bargain built around the public switched telephone network — universal service obligations, interconnection rules, the definition of a 'phone company' — becomes negotiable, and the fight shifts to what consumer protections survive the rewrite.
- The commission's own structure is implicated too: calls dating back at least to the 2008 'Reboot the FCC' debate argued the agency was organized around technologies it regulates, and a technology-neutral network forces that question again.
The trend: Telecom regulation is pivoting from administering a circuit-switched phone monopoly to governing IP-based communications, with the FCC using the transition itself as the vehicle for rewriting the rules.