ABSTRACT
As digitization and packet switching revolutionize communications networks, U.S. communications law faces a dilemma: How can it reconcile an old law that contains distinct regulatory structures for telephony, broadcasting, cable television, and satellites, and that leaves Internet protocol (lP) transmission largely unregulated, with a future in which voice, video, text, and data will simply be different forms of information to be transmitted using IP or other packet-switched protocols? In particular, to what extent should (or can) regulators impose existing telecommunications regulation, including the snarl of cross-subsidies that dominates the telephone system, on IP networks?
