Politics & Power Quote by John Sununu

“Simply put” is doing a lot of political work here: it signals impatience with nuance while preemptively framing any dissent as needless complication. Sununu’s sentence is a classic Washington move - translate a messy technological transition into a clean jurisdictional claim. “Broadband voice” (VoIP, essentially) arrived as a category-bender: it looks like phone service to consumers, but it rides on the internet and ignores state borders by design. Calling it “an interstate matter” isn’t just descriptive; it’s a legal lever. If it’s interstate, the federal government gets primacy, and state regulators - who might impose consumer protections, taxes, or public-utility-style obligations - get sidelined.

The phrase “must be dealt with” is deliberately coercive, presenting federal preemption as inevitability rather than choice. Then comes the clincher: “clear national standards.” “Clear” flatters itself as pro-consumer and pro-business at the same time. For industry, it promises one rulebook instead of fifty, lowering compliance costs and blocking state-by-state friction. For the public, it markets centralization as clarity, even though “national standards” can mean weaker protections if the national rule is written to keep the market nimble rather than keep users safe.

Contextually, this sits in the early-2000s regulatory tug-of-war over whether VoIP should be treated like traditional telephony. The subtext is a bet on innovation rhetoric: don’t let old regulatory architecture slow down a new network economy. It’s not a neutral statement about geography; it’s a power claim about who gets to write the rules of the next communications era.