The Hungarian regulatory authority NHH has today issued a memorandum providing guidance to service providers on the authorisation (i.e. the requirement for registration) of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services.

The NHH warns that all VoIP services, whether they are services allowing end-users connected to an IP network to communicate with end-users connected to the traditional circuit switched telephone network or vice versa, or whether they are provided end-to-end over IP networks, have to be registered as voice services with the NHH.

If the service technically complies with the ITU recommendations or ETSI regulations that are applicable to fixed telephony services (the corresponding documents are not listed in the memorandum), the service is regarded as a fixed telephony service by the NHH, must therefore be registered as such, and is therefore subject to the corresponding regulations, including all rights and obligations.

Existing service providers, which have registered VoIP services under a different category (e.g. as data services), have to amend their registration to be compliant.

The full text (in Hungarian, just 1 page), of the NHH memorandum on VoIP can be accessed by clicking here.