ions; the regulatory environment may determine whether these services flourish in the long run. In an interview he did with the San Jose Mercury News on December 31, 2003, then-Chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC; www.fcc. gov) Michael Powell said, "To be a phone company you don't have to weave tightly the voice service into the infrastructure. You can ride it on top of the infrastructure. So if you're a Vonage, you own no infrastructure, you own no trucks, you roll to no one's house. They turn voice into an application and shoot it across one of these platforms and suddenly you're in business. And that's why if you're the music industry you're scared. And if you're the television studio, movie industry, you're scared. And if you're an incumbent infrastructure carrier, you'd better be scared because this application separation is the most important paradigm shift in the his- tory of communications and will change things forever. I have no problem if a big and venerable company no longer exists tomorrow, as long as that value is trans- ferred somewhere else in the economy." These are interesting words to contem- plate as we try to predict what the regulatory approach toward IP communications will be, and the approach will no doubt vary around the world. The area of international regulation has seen increasing activity, mostly from the United Nations (UN) and the ITU (which has regulated spectrum and tele- phony for decades and was placed under the auspices of the UN). For some time, the ITU has been considering what role it should take in relationship to the Inter- net, a medium that grew up completely independent of the ITU and where most activists see no positive role for the ITU. Another UN/ITU activity, the World Sum- mit on the Information Society, has established a working group on Internet gover- nance to look into these issues. A new set of European Union (EU) directives will significantly affect the licensing requirements of IPT in Europe. The European Commission (EC) is the drivin