Hungary
- Keep the sound (quality) down, okay?
NOTE: This note has been prepared by Craig
McTaggart and Tim Kelly of the ITU Strategies & Policy Unit (SPU).
The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not
necessarily reflect the opinions of the ITU or its membership. This note
is available on the ITU Ip Telephony Website.
While many jurisdictions have implicitly used the inferior
sound quality of Internet and IP Telephony as the basis for a regulatory
distinction between voice telephony and Internet data, Hungary has gone one step
further and made sound quality the explicit
distinction. Indeed, Hungary’s
VoIP policy may be the most direct and detailed in the world.
The policy, released on 22 July 1999, applies to all telecommunications
service licensees and licence applicants, including previously-licensed Internet
Service Providers (ISPs) and would-be Internet Telephony Service Providers (ITSPs).
Since the incumbent MATÁV’s exclusive rights (until
31.12.2001) to carry international public long-distance voice telephone traffic
can only be by-passed if the established speech connection qualifies as a
"non-public-voice-telephony" connection, the Hungarian policy imposes
sound quality limits to prevent IP Telephony from serving as a perfect
substitute for PSTN voice services.
If voice telephony service is provided by means of
transmission of speech signals in a “customary” (circuit-switched) way in
any section of the domestic Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) or Public
Land Mobile Network (PLMN) (except for leased lines), to qualify as a
non-public-voice-telephony connection, those speech signals must meet a series
of conditions. They must be
differentiable from customary voice telephony service as follows: the service
provider must (in addition to other minor requirements, such as using only
type-approved equipment): (1) ensure a minimum 250 millisecond (ms) average
delay of speech signal transmission between the terminal devices; (2) not
guarantee that the loss of speech packets causing short interruption of speech
will be less than 1%, and; (3) draw users' attention to the quality parameters
which differ from those of public voice telephony when publicizing the service.
Services which use a PSTN of PLMN number as an originating gateway to the
Internet are also covered by these requirements (e.g. freephone numbers or
calling card access numbers). Calls
originating on leased lines are not affected.
Hungary has a vibrant IP Telephony services market, with 14
service providers licensed under this policy as of early 2000, including ISPs,
incumbent carriers, and mobile operators. IP Telephony licensing has been
successfully used as a way of diversifying the Hungarian market for
international voice telephony in advance of its full liberalization.
Presumably IP Telephony will be treated as simply another platform for
providing public voice telecommunication services once the market is fully
liberalised.
Sources:
Communication Authority, Hungary, “Information for telecommunications service
licence applicants intended for voice telephony usage of Internet” (22 July
1999), http://www.hif.hu/voipdir3.htm,
and “Regulation of public fixed telephone services and VoIP (Voice over
Internet Protocol) in Hungary”,
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