The reason AT&T was banned from refusing to connect certain calls is because they have a monopoly-like presence in many areas. With no other means for customers to make those calls, AT&T was taking unfair advantage of the fact that customers could not easily switch to another carrier. Google Voice is free, and requires an existing, non-Google phone carrier. Apples to oranges.
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.
Indeed. To get around AT&T's limitations, you would have to sell your house, buy a new one, and move everything you own to that new house. A lot of work just to call a few phone numbers.
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.
I agree with you, now. It seems like every day I'm switching to some Google product and I fear in the future we might feel about Google the way we feel now about Rogers (or AT&T or whoever). And they'll hold all our email, photos, calendars, contacts, waves, ...
The fact that Google Voice is free should be an aggravating factor, not a defense.
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.
The critical question here is "Is a call-forwarding service the same as a telephone provider?" Google has no cell phone towers or phone lines.
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.
what you state may be true but it is not necessarily wrong. The physical equivalent is that while everyone should have access to the roads that doesn't mean you get to have access to my house as well. Even though my house is connected to the road doesn't mean the same rules as the road apply.
Read David's and Darkmane's comment on the blog. If GV emulates the functionality of a common carrier, then the same guiding principles with regards to net neutrality should apply.
Then can AT&T offer a cheaper 'AT&T Voice' long-distance, that opts out of 'common-carrier' requirements and doesn't connect to the expensive rural numbers?
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?
That may open up a new revenue stream for AT&T, but I don't think it solves the cost issue in their long-haul business that they were trying to address by not carrying calls terminating at expensive LEC's.
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.
Google Voice doesn't offer phone functionality(with the exception of SMS). It offers bidirectional phone call forwarding functionality. The price isn't the real issue. The difference in functionality is.
Edit: I was less clear than I meant to be. The price to the customer is not the issue here.
Then why can't Google's mere "bidirectional phone call forwarding" include the disputed rural endpoints?
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.
Google Voice doesn't compete with AT&T any more than a VOIP provider that you use via your DSL or cable internet competes with your ISP. They provide different services, and the one you are arguing competes with the telephone carrier or ISP actually relies on the customer paying a telephone carrier or ISP.
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.
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.
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".
You make a lot of assumptions there. The only salient point is that Google does not run the network they just forward calls. If they decide they don't want to forward calls to certain numbers that is there perogative. It's a whole lot different than the people running the wires and networks cutting of portions of the network from access to their users. When AT&T disables access to those numbers No one with AT&T service can call those networks. The same is not true for GV. The reasons for AT&T's restrictions do not apply and arguably should not apply.
GV does far more than forward calls -- they offer a lot of the same value-added services AT&T charges for. And very importantly: GV includes a dialable number. People in (for example) those Iowa counties can call GV numbers, but those GV numbers can't return those calls. Maybe Google's Vint Cerf can explain how that asymmetry improves the End-to-End Connectivity of the phone and data networks involved?
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.
Mr Mohr, GV has been only around for less than a year. Please give them some time to grow some legs and feet to stand on. Perhaps the limitation is not cost at this point, but the infrastructure. Again, they are still in private beta, meaning they are not claiming to be a legitimate service providing service to everyone, unlike A&T or Sprint or Verizon.
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.
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.