Congressional support for AT&T complaint against Google Voice

Jake Widman
Saturday, 10 October 2009 06:22

IT Industry - Market

Twenty members of the U.S. Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, have asked the Federal Communications Commission to look into Google's blockage of Google Voice calls to certain exchanges. The request is in support of a complaint sent to the FCC a couple of weeks ago by AT&T.

The gist of AT&T's complaint is that Google Voice, Google's free multifunction telephone service, does not follow the same regulations that bind traditional carriers.

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.