Telecom Law Monitor

VoIP providers, prepare to report outages to the FCC.  Since early in 2010, the FCC has been on a path to impose new outage reporting obligations on providers of interconnected VoIP services, despite industry opposition to the new requirements.  Today, the FCC released its "Sunshine Notice" confirming that it will vote on an order to adopt reporting requirements at its February 15th open meeting.  Here is how it described the VoIP item:

The Commission will consider a Report and Order to extend outage reporting under
Part IV of the rules to interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service providers. Extended reporting will enable the Commission to fulfill statutory E9-1-1 obligations and help protect the growing number of Americans who rely on VOIP phone service.

The FCC notice is available at this link.  On the 15th, interested persons may view the FCC meeting at this link.