AT&T Calls Google a Hypocrite On Net Neutrality 95
NotBornYesterday writes "AT&T is accusing Google of being a hypocrite when it comes to Net neutrality because it blocks certain phone calls on its Google Voice service. 'By openly flaunting the call-blocking prohibition that applies to its competitors, Google is acting in a manner inconsistent with the spirit, if not the letter, of the FCC's fourth principle contained in its Internet Policy Statement,' Robert Quinn, AT&T's senior vice president focusing on federal regulation, said in a statement. Google blocks certain calls to avoid high costs due to a practice known as traffic pumping. Rural carriers can charge connection fees that are about 100 times higher than the rates that large local phone companies can charge. In traffic pumping, they share this revenue with adult chat services, conference-calling centers, party lines, and others that are able to attract lots of incoming phone calls to their networks. Google responded by saying that the rules AT&T refers to don't apply to Google Voice for several reasons. Google Voice is a software application that offers a service on top of the existing telco infrastructure, it is a free service, and it is not intended to be a replacement for traditional telephone service. In fact, the service requires that users have a landline phone or a wireless phone."
Re:Those who live by the sword... (Score:4, Interesting)
HAHAHAHAA!
Yeah - you've got a point. From my end, I used to work at ATT back in the evil early 80s, and it was one of the most corrupt and arrogant places I was ever involved with. And they were always the people bringing a knife to a gun fight - fighting this year's war with last year's technology and last decade's strategy. Clusterfuck central. There are ways to deal with all of this, but ATT lacks the creativity, and Google is too opportunistic to work any of it out. Sigh. Trainwreck on the count of three... 1... 2...
Sure, it's offending the spirit of the law, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Looking first at broadband penetration, they want everyone to have broadband. At 4x the speed of a 56kbps modem. With download caps. And traffic shaping. Who's violating the spirit of the law?
Moving along to cell phone inter-operability. Although many telcos allow you to use outside phones on their networks, actually unlocking a phone is nearly impossible (with a few exceptions). Granted, they've subsidized your phone purchase. But you subsidize their paycheques.
Next topic: Phone number portability. It wasn't that long ago that you couldn't actually move your phone number when you left your portable phone company for another. So much for portability.
Finally... It's AT&T. They outsource (and violate the american dream!) and barely train their call centre employees. It is impossibly difficult to get out of a contract, even when they've violated the terms, and they charge for checking your voice mail and receiving text messages. Although they're legally allowed to do that, it violates the spirit of only paying for time that you use!
... also, they're owned by satan, but that's beside the point.
Google isn't an ISP (Score:4, Interesting)
What the hell is AT&T smoking? Net Neutrality has nothing to do with phone service at the phone network level. Net Neutrality is all about internet network packet delivery and it is basically an Internet Service Provider issue, not about phone service. Last time I checked Google isn't an ISP (to third parties) while AT&T is for a large chunk of this country and as a major packet routing network (aka backbone provider) between various ISPs. AT&T trying its best to spread FUD as usual as it did in order to get laws passed to ban Municipal ISPs.
Google is doing what the FCC should (Score:5, Interesting)
AT&T and a load of other telcos have complained about this as they are hoisted by their own petard (free calls to landlines), and the net neutrality principle. The FCC are being painfully slow in sorting this out and giving the rural providers a good bitchslap.
I don't blame Google for not routing to these numbers, there are clearly defined prefixes for premium rate services and this is just a dodge to get round that. Eventually the loophole will be closed.
Google isn't a government-backed oligopoly. (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
You misunderstand (Score:4, Interesting)
The user doesn't get charged at all, just the phone company. The rural phone companies are exploiting a sideways subsidy meant to allow them to charge more for connections to rural homes by redirecting calls to large call centres through their networks. It's a shell game.
Now that (Score:3, Interesting)
I use Google Voice to keep my ATT bills low (Score:4, Interesting)
imagine if the same thing happened to the internet (Score:4, Interesting)
The lack of neutrality on the phone network exists because AT&T (along with the other Regional Bell Operating Companies, aka "ex-AT&T's" aka "Incumbent Local Exchange Comapnies") lobbied for it and they did so out of a belief that *they* owned the most valuable phone network resource (lots of subscribers) and could use the lack of peering to block competitors from entering the market (even though that was THE reason the courts caused the RBOCs to be created) by charging the competitors (CLECs) huge fees to access AT&T's customers which the CLECs would, in turn, have to pass on to their customers. Who'd buy phone service from Vonage if they had to charge you 15 times as much as AT&T or Verizon just so that Vonage customers could sometimes dial AT&T or Verizon customers?
Now the "incumbent" ISPs are making the same mistake in believing that *they* control the most valuable Internet resource (again, lots of subscribers) and want the right to charge connection fees. So what if somebody repeats what happened in the phone network world and starts up a small (restricted customer set) top-tier ISP and promises to give Google or Youtube absolutely free Internet service with the expectation that the ISP will recoup that cost (and much more) by charging the "incumbent" ISPs huge fees to connect people with Google's servers? Cha-Ching!
You'd think these people would learn from their mistakes...
Re:Sure, it's offending the spirit of the law, but (Score:1, Interesting)
Ugh, number portability. What a huge goddamn mess.
For the unwashed masses:
Your NPA-NXX is owned by the Local exchange carrier, When number portability came out, they basically said, "oh, well now we need twice as many numbers" One number is the REAL NPA-NXX (which is no longer your true phone number, and the other is the dialable number. So your phone number may be 123-555-1234, but the carrier's number may really be 321-555-8765. In a sense, each "phone number" is now really two. the one you dial, and the one that acts as your "address" in the phone network. Everytime you place a call, your local exchange carrier contacts the original owner of that number to find out if it still owns it. If it isn't still owned, then it goes 'ok, who does?", and contacts the number.
On a mobile phone, this is the MIN and MDN, you might see references to this if you have a CDMA phone. GSM phones will never know what their MIN is unless they call their carrier and ask. But it's not useful to you anyway.
But thats beside the point. Number portability, isn't. It's implemented as a series of work-arounds, and some carriers utilize call forwarding instead. There will never be a proper implmentation of number portability unless the phone system becomes an all digital, all IP peer network. Because then, instead of going 'who does own that number', people will be able to just phone mommy@example.com and the SIP or equivilent provider will send that along the lease expensive route possible. If mommy@ happens to have a IP phone, it would bypass the switched phone network entirely. If mommy@ doesn't, then long distance can be bypassed by having the call originate at the least-expensive termination point on the IP network.
People already do this with long distance cards and "unlimited mobile to mobile" calls. They simply bridge two end points of different carriers (eg verizon and at & t) by having both calls terminate at the same physical location or at VoIP locations and some hardware trickery. Given, it requires two mobile phones to setup, if you want to have unlimited calls to your kid in california on verizon while you are using at&t. Your kid calls into the local M2M number, and you call the local M2M number, and they connect it via VoIP. Yes there is lag, but hey, who cares when it's free?