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technological and functional integration of VoIP
applications—mobile broadband should now be considered
interconnected with the telephone network. Indeed, even for
communications from one mobile broadband user to another,
mobile broadband generally works in conjunction with a
native or third-party application of some sort (e.g., an email
application such as Gmail or a messaging application such as
WhatsApp) to facilitate transmission of users’ messages. The
conjunction of mobile broadband and VoIP to enable IP-totelephone communications is no different.
That is especially apparent in light of the Commission’s
regulatory definition of “interconnected service.”
The
regulation calls for assessing whether mobile broadband
“gives subscribers the capability to communicate to”
telephone users. 47 C.F.R. § 20.3 (emphasis added). Mobile
petitioners do not challenge the Commission’s understanding
that a “capability to communicate” suffices to establish an
interconnected service, and we see no ground for rejecting the
Commission’s conclusion that mobile broadband gives
subscribers the “capability to communicate to” telephone
users through VoIP. And although the regulation also
references “receiv[ing] communications from” others in the
network, id., mobile petitioners also do not challenge the
Commission’s understanding that the capability either to
“communicate to or receive communication from” is enough,
id. (emphasis added). Consequently, the capability of mobile
broadband users “to communicate to” telephone users via
VoIP suffices to render the network—and, most importantly,
its users—“interconnected.”
Mobile petitioners note what they perceive to be a
separate problem associated with communications running in
the reverse direction (i.e., the capability of mobile broadband
users to “receive communications from” telephone users).
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