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Information Technology News Congressional support for AT&T complaint against Google Voice
Information Technology News Congressional support for AT&T complaint against Google Voice | Congressional support for AT&T complaint against Google Voice |
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| by Jake Widman | |
| Saturday, 10 October 2009 | |
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Specifically, the complaint centers around the ability to block phone calls to particular exchanges. Some local phone companies, mostly in rural areas, charge high rates for long-distance access to their exchanges. Phone sex and adult chat providers, conference calling centers, and other high-traffic operations often set up shop in those areas because the access fees will generate a lot of revenue, which the local carries sometimes kick back a portion of. With us so far? Long-distance carriers (like AT&T) would prefer to restrict traffic to those exchanges in order to avoid paying the high access fees. But in 2007, the FCC ruled that the long-distance carriers had to provide such access regardless. Enter Google Voice. In addition to such services as voice mail, call forwarding, and call filtering, Google Voice allows subscribers to, essentially, place outgoing calls that are actually only a connection to their own local Google Voice number. But Google restricts which numbers it will connect a subscriber to, blocking the same kind of high-fee exchanges the FCC told AT&T it has to serve. For more on Google Voice and AT&T's complaint, see Page 2. |
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