My Apologies to Rep. Upton, I Misunderstood!!!

At 10:12 PM 3/16/2005 -0600, R Collinge wrote [in the VoIP News list]:

Hi Jack, > Are you reading Rep Upton's comments correctly? I had interpreted > his quote as something like, "It is scary that we were so close to > disaster, which could easily have happened if not for a few brave > commissioners and judges." I read his thought as being that we need > federal regulation to keep the hungry states permanently at bay. > Also, I certainly agree with your point about international > competition holding the power of regulators in check. FWIW, I > commented to the FCC on the Vonage petition back in November '03, > and think I mentioned it then, too. > Bob

Bob and everyone,

Oh, boy, when I blow it I really blow it. I had of course interpreted it as, "these seven individuals stopped the states from doing what they ought to be able to do", but when Bob sent the above comment, I did a Google search to see if Rep. Upton had made any other remarks on VoIP, and came up with this:

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"We will never know VoIP's tremendous potential if we saddle it with unwarranted government regulation," Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., said in his opening remarks at one of the first hearings to address VoIP regulation. Upton, who chairs the House telecommunications subcommittee, warned that "VoIP providers should not be regulated like common carriers."

So, I apologize to Rep. Upton and to the readers of the MI-Telecom and VoIP News groups -- apparently he gets it. Actually, I guess I should have realized that SBC, Verizon, and Comcast would not necessarily favor regulation of VoIP because they all are getting into it. It's the smaller rural companies (the second- and third-tier companies) that really feel threatened by VoIP. What I think misled me was the fact that the article started out as kind of an anti-VoIP hit piece (in effect saying that someone could have died because they tried to use a VoIP line to call 911) and when Rep. Upton's remarks were included in that type of article, I took them in a negative light.

In fact, I almost have to wonder if the writer of that article deliberately took that quote out of context in such a way that some people (like me) might think that Rep. Upton was anti-VoIP. Still, I feel like an idiot right now -- what was obvious to Bob and probably to many of you totally went right past me. Mea culpa and all that!