The Minn. PUC told a federal appeals court that the legal challen...
The Minn. PUC told a federal appeals court that the legal challenges to its decision to exert telephone regulatory jurisdiction over VoIP provider Vonage were all based on misinterpretations of federal law and policy. In a reply brief to…
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the 8th U.S. Appeals Court, St. Louis, on its appeal of a lower court ruling denying state authority over the VoIP provider, the PUC said Vonage’s offering isn’t an information service because the content is received exactly as sent. The PUC said Vonage’s service would have to change the content significantly to be considered an unregulated information service. The PUC also said the Pulver.com decision against VoIP regulation doesn’t apply to Vonage because Pulver’s type of VoIP service never touched the public switched telephone network or the N. American Numbering plan. The PUC said claims that federal law and policy preempt state regulation of VoIP with respect to 911 were unsupported by citation of a preemptive federal law or policy. The PUC also took issue with claims that VoIP traffic can’t be jurisdictionally separated. It cited several ways to readily determine whether a VoIP call is inter- or intrastate, such as identifying jurisdiction by the originating and terminating numbers. The PUC said jurisdiction is determined by start and end points, not how calls travel in between.