In 2008, AT&T and other long-distance phone companies complained to the FCC about the practice. The rural carriers charge the high rates and then split the revenue with these partners. But in a practice known as traffic pumping, some of these rural carriers are sharing 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. He said the company is doing that because certain local telephone carriers in rural areas charge AT&T and other long-distance companies especially high rates to connect calls to their networks.īecause they are small, rural phone companies are allowed to charge connection fees that are about 100 times higher than the rates that large local phone companies can charge. He acknowledged that Google is blocking calls to some rural regions.
In his blog post Friday afternoon, Google's Whitt fired back with an explanation. "Ironically, Google is also flouting the so-called 'fifth principle of nondiscrimination' for which Google has so fervently advocated." "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. In a letter to the FCC filed on Friday, AT&T said Google is violating the fourth principle in the FCC's Internet Policy Statement, which calls for fair competition among providers of networks, applications, services, and content, as it blocks telephone calls made using Google Voice service to certain rural communities. Google defended its position in a blog post written by Richard Whitt, Google's main lobbyist and telecommunications lawyer in Washington, that basically said AT&T is comparing apples and oranges.
The carrier has written a letter to the Federal Communications Commission claiming that Google has violated the agency's Net neutrality principles, which Google has long supported.
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