[December 9, 2003]

TMCnet.com Launches Fight Against VoIP Regulation

Norwalk, CT, [December 4, 2003] — Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC^®) [www.tmcnet.com] posted an online petition on their popular TMCnet.com Web site today hoping to gather enough ‘signatures’ to convince government regulators to maintain a ‘hands-off’ policy regarding calls placed over the Internet. The federal government has begun a much-publicized attempt to tax Internet phone calls in much the same way as they do cellular and PSTN calls.

According to Rich Tehrani, President and Group Editor-in-Chief of TMC, adding surcharges and tariffs to IP telephony calls will discourage competition and stifle investment in this exciting technology.

“We need IP telephony to remain unregulated so that competition can increase and consumers can be given more and lower cost choices when it comes to choosing a service provider. Already, companies like Verizon and AT&T have been forced to offer services similar to those offered by the Vonage and Net2Phone simply to stay competitive, said Tehrani.

He added, “Any regulation or threat thereof will scare equipment providers, service providers and the entities that finance these companies leading to less investment and/or innovation and an overall loss of choice for consumers.”

The online petition is located at http://www.tmcnet.com/voip/voipreg.aspx.

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