Google's response to AT&T
googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com
googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com
I have to give Google the benefit of the doubt in any case, because I like Google's services and use them willingly on a daily basis. On the other hand, companies like Verizon and AT&T have become a necessary evil.
To get around Google's limitations, just Google search (oh, the irony) for a new VoIP provider -- there are millions. (Skype is particularly popular.) This is not a lot of work; considering you don't even pay money for GV. If it doesn't work, leaving is very easy.
Websites and physical infrastructure are two very different areas. AT&T is just bitter about the fact that the government paid for most of their infrastructure and that the same government is making sure AT&T dosn't use it to hurt the people that paid to have it built.
Google makes extreme profits in a market where they have a de facto monopoly. (Advertisers may think of AdWords as 'a necessary evil'.)
Should Google be able to use those profits to subsidize their entry into another regulated market? And with their offering, not even incur the same call-connection-charges that regulated incumbents are required to pay?
I'd say, drop all the regulations and let the titans duke it out. Technology changes fast enough that no monopoly lasts very long without regulator help.
But given that Google asked for the FCC to enforce new rules to defend their business, it's just fair turnabout that AT&T is now doing the same to Google.
That's not a good reason to give someone the benefit of the doubt in a legal (or, now that I think about it, just about any) matter.
When you call someone with Google Voice this happens: 1. Google calls the number you're calling with the GV number they've assigned to you. 2. Google calls your actual phone number. 3. Google connects the two calls so you're talking to the person you wanted to call via your actual phone provider's network. 4. Your actual phone provider charges you money.
Whereas when you call with a normal phone provider: 1. You dial the number. 2. Your phone provider connects you to the person over their network. 3. Your phone provider charges you money.
The only significant difference I see between the two is that with Google Voice, you show up differently on the caller ID of the person you call.
"The FCC's open Internet principles apply only to the behavior of broadband carriers -- not the creators of Web-based software applications."
Or in other words: Neutrality and FCC regulations for thee, but not for me.
If "the point" is that Google can choose to offer phone functionality that's less-than-common-carrier-compliant, why can't AT&T be allowed to offer a cheaper service, too?
I don't know the details of it, but it seems like they are obliged by regulation or legislation to provide that service to rural LEC's. It could be compared to Starbucks trying to close down an unprofitable rural store and being told they had to keep it open to satisfy rural coffee drinkers' caffeine addictions.
Edit: I was less clear than I meant to be. The price to the customer is not the issue here.
I assure you the dollar costs of complying with the regulation (paying the rural phone services), and thus the prices at which competing services can be profitable, are the only "real issue" here. Neither Google nor AT&T are charities. Everything they do -- even when writing whiny letters to the FCC (which both are guilty of) -- is motivated by profits.
I don't think we should ask: "Why can't Google's mere 'bidirectional phone call forwarding' include the disputed rural endpoints?", but rather "Why should a call forwarding service be held to the same network neutrality constraints issues as an actual phone provider?". When you make a call with Google Voice, Google doesn't transmit your voice over the internet or over telephone wires or via microwaves. Your phone provider does that. Regardless of whether it would be better for GV to allow you to call those rural areas(which of course, it would be), we should not expand the jurisdiction of the FCC to include services that are not actual communication networks of any kind.
If true, why are certain numbers blocked, and the right to block numbers at Google's discretion asserted in the GV terms-of-service? Those calls are not being routed over your existing phone provider, or else Google wouldn't care about the destination.
And why shouldn't a "forwarding" service -- one that includes a new dialable endpoint number, SMS, conferencing, free long-distance, and more -- meet the same regulatory standards as other competitive services offering a phone number/SMS/conferencing/bundled-long-distance/etc.?
If Google can route an inbound call to any of several numbers purchased from other providers (mobile/home/office), even switching mid-call, how are they doing that if their service does not travel over and depend on "actual communication networks of any kind"?
It's unseemly that Google argues from general principles of fairness when asking the FCC to make rules in new areas (as with network neutrality), but then splits semantic hairs to define their quacks-like-a-duck GV offering as an exempt "Web-based software application".
If AT&T blocked dialing to those counties, AT&T customers would have to pay another long-distance provider more to complete their calls. Since Google blocks dialing those counties, GV customers have to... pay another long-distance provider more to complete those calls. Exactly equivalent, in practice.
I've lived in a lot of different places in my life, and AT&T certainly does not provide DSL or a phone line in all of the United States.