California To Appeal of FCC’s VOIP Order

Vonage and other VOIP telephone service providers may have won in Minnesota, but the state of California will have none of it, wanting VOIP to be regulated.

“The state of California is mounting a legal challenge to a recent Federal Communications Commission ruling that VOIP phone services sold by Vonage Holdings Corp. were exempt from state and local regulations and tariffs.

In a petition for review filed with the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit, the Public Utilities Commission of California said it plans to argue that the FCC exceeded its statutory jurisdiction in its November ruling.”

Vonage and other VOIP telephone service providers claim they are not a traditional telephone service and should not be treated as one. Instead they would prefer to be referenced as an “IP-Enabled Service”.

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