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Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has been evolving in the business world in a way that has made the technology position itself to be a regulatory winner no matter what the situation. Companies that you would least expect to see on the side of VoIP services for various reasons are working hard to keep this particular sector of the business world deregulated. AT&T (News - Alert), which is best known for serving customers through traditional phone lines and then through cellular phone lines, is trying to get its customers to move over to the VoIP phone services.

The company wants to do this because it doesn’t feel it needs to put as much money into traditional wireline upkeep, while smaller companies point out that these wirelines are still needed in order to maintain reliable Internet service. One advocate who recently spoke at the Heartland Technology (News - Alert) Alliace conference, talked about how important it is to avoid regulation. Rick Boucher believes that lack of regulation can actually lead to innovation, especially when talking about the consumer tech market.

Old technology, like traditional landlines, has actually made it harder for companies like AT&T to work on and improve VoIP services because of the money that is being spent in the old technology.

“The dollars (AT&T) spends maintaining the network that people don’t want anymore, and are leaving, are dollars the company cannot invest in the more modern networks that the customers have expressed preference for,” Boucher said in an interview with the Business Record. “So the whole goal of the IP transition from an economic sense is to encourage the flow of dollars out of less-productive infrastructure into more productive infrastructure.”

While that argument might seem like a winning one on its surface, there are problems with it. The main issues are that VoIP lines are indeed using these “old” lines at the present time. Until AT&T and other companies can explain how deregulation would change that, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of movement toward the goal of less regulation.