regulation of VoIP is an interesting question. I attended a talk today from Dave Clark (MIT) who noted how it was the DoJ / Home Affairs reps who wanted to have intercept capability built-into the code for VoIP due to the difficulty of traditional tapping a packet-switched phonecall. i think we are fortunate here in the EU with the recent announcement of 'hands-off' regulation of VoIP that the NRAs have been advised to follow. hopefully itll stay that way as too stringent regulation can stifle innovation that is emerging thru voip capabilities

I wish I am able to get to see what Clark said or for that matter what is the specific request from DoJ. If service providers are required to comply with the full CALEA requirement, then they have to relay media through their network elements for ALL calls, just so that one call's content can be inercepted without being detected. I suggest that this will dramatically affect many VoIP service providers.

Ironically this will not serve the intended objective, since the miscreants can easiliy communicate without the aid of the service providers. That is why I feel that CALEA must be applied at the Network layer. For this CALEA needs to be rewritten.

I think it’s very interesting that the conversation about regulation varies so much from country to country specifically in regards to the relationship between government revenues and regulation

For example in the developing world the discussion is often related to government revenue but in the US it largely surrounds e911 and interception.

My question is, what about the EU? If they move towards non-regulation will that not undermine the traditionally expensive (in comparison to NA) phone markets? Why has the telephone lobby not stepped up to the bat to ensure regulation and that they will not loose an ability to charge per minute on local and domestic calls (as they have for ions)?

In Canada things are interesting as even the dominant telco is getting into voip (along with cable companies), the government has been slow to discuss this trend but no one is waiting. In comparison to Europe this would seem to indicate that the Canadian telcos are seeing an increased revenue, not decreased revenue from voip - but the difference being Canadians (and Americans) have unlimited local (and sometimes domestic long distance) already.

Legal or not, the genie is out of the bottle:

http://www.asterisk.org/

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/001777.php

http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/CALEA/