Regulatory Prospect of the VoIP Service in Wireless/Mobile Environment

  • 하영욱 (한국전자통신연구원 네트워크경제연구팀) ;
  • 조병선 (한국전자통신연구원 네트워크경제연구팀) ;
  • 윤영석 (한국전자통신연구원 네트워크경제연구팀)
  • Published : 2006.10.31

Abstract

When the Internet phone service, generally PC-to-Phone, first entered into the telecommunications service market, no regulatory issues were arisen to manage the service within the regulatory framework because of it's low quality, no phone number assignment and etc. However, almost the same quality, more applications and cheaper price compared with the fixed telecommunications service, have changed the regulator's policy allowing Internet phone service within market mechanism. While incumbent fixed telecommunications service enterprises had given with tremendous duties to continue the job categorized 'facilities-based telecommunication service provider', and which can be unreasonable and unfair if Internet phone service enterprises are allowed to enter into the fixed telecommunications market without any regulation. Thus, new regulatory framework has worked for the Internet phone service named the VoIP service generally in the fixed telecommunications market. Recently, VoIP is provided not only in the fixed telecommunications market but also in the mobile market as Wi-Fi phone is feasible in the wireless LAN environment. Furthermore, bundled service of Wi-Fi and cellular phone service will be launched soon, and the next version will be the mobile VoIP service operating like a cellular phone service. Hence, we will meet similar situation when the VoIP sewice enters into the fixed telecommunications service market. And, in this paper, we prospect the regulatory issues arising when the wireless or mobile VoIP service enterprises enter the mobile market, by analyzing possible scenarios.

Keywords

References

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