Google Voice under fire over adult chatline blocking: FCC to investigate
The Federal Communications Commission is investigating claims that Google’s Voice service is breaching regulations by blocking some calls to rural areas. It’s reopened the debate about the way traditional phone networks and those which carry voice calls over data connections are regulated.
The commission is expected to write to Google today to confirm a formal probe. It follows calls for a hearing by 20 Congressmen earlier this week.
The claims involve the complicated process by which different phone companies pay fees to one another when a long-distance call is routed around the country. Some groups operating phone services, such as those running teleconferencing firms or providing adult chatline, intentionally set themselves up so that they receive the call in a rural area. Doing so means that they can wind up making a healthy sum from the routing fees while charging little or nothing to the person calling the service.
FCC rules mean that phone networks are not allowed to block calls to such locations: partly to protect people in rural areas from being denied the ability to receive all incoming calls, and partly as a point of principle that all legal calls should be treated the same.
However, Google has blocked some calls to the locations in its Google Voice service. It argues that it is not a telephone network and thus shouldn’t be subject to the rules. Critics say Google is clearly running a rival service to traditional phone networks and should be treated the same way.
Ironically the FCC is already investigating whether Google itself was the victim of unfair behavior over the Google Voice app being blocked from the iPhone, with some dispute over whether it was Apple or AT&T, which made that call.
Also this week, the FCC announced a separate investigation into the fees cellphone networks charge one another when rerouting calls through their own networks.
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October 29th, 2009
[...] we reported earlier this month, the Federal Communications Commission began an investigation into the firm’s blocking of calls [...]