Recent Articles

FCC Probes Call Blocking In Google Voice
Last week, twenty members of Congress sided with AT&T and asked the Federal Communications Commission to take a good look at Google Voice, because the...

US Government Moves Towards Web 2.0 With Apps.gov
Give the government some credit sometimes, the new Apps.gov web site is an open shopping portal based on cloud computing and web 2.0 applications.

Underground Military Bloggers, Censorship and Fear
This should be of interesting to almost every blogger out there. We all know that there are some bloggers who maintain their anonymity like Mini-Microsoft...

FCC Begins To Probe Wireless Providers
Imagine this. You are in the wireless industry and you are on the verge of actually fulfilling all of the prophecies about your industry being the future of the Internet...


11.10.09

Google Fires Back Against FCC Probing

By Andy Beal

While it remains unclear whether Google Voice should be treated the same way as other telecom companies, the search giant isn’t taking any chances with the rather unpleasant probing it’s receiving from the Federal Communications Commission.

Thanks in part to the finger-pointing of AT&T, Google has to answer the accusations that it does not connect calls to certain rural areas. AT&T believes this is unfair–Google should be made to connect calls to any location, regardless of how expensive it is to the company–but Google is firing back, claiming that it’s only blocking calls to obvious “traffic pumping” numbers.

Now, Google has gone one step further. In a letter to the FCC, it claims it has isolated less than 100 numbers that are responsible for the practice, and is now only blocking those specific numbers. If you’re short on time, here’s the pertinent text from Google’s letter:


In June 2009, Google Voice began noticing extremely high cost calls to a concentrated number of destinations. Our internal investigation revealed that the top 10 prefixes to U.S. destinations (NPA-NXX) accounted for l.l percent of our monthly U.S. traffic by volume – an unusually large number, and some 161 times the expected amount by prefix. In tum, this traffic accounted for 26.2 percent of our monthly U.S. cost – again, an unexpectedly large number. In addition to these grossly anomalous call patterns (which include the frequency and duration of calls to rural areas), we also were aware through various industry sources of certain in-bound traffic stimulation practices, and the identities and locations of some of the carriers in question. Many of these businesses are located in rural areas with local carriers that charge unusually high rates for terminating traffic. Our own underlying carriers would assess Google Voice up to 39 cents per minute for some of this interstate traffic. As a result, based on an application of these data filters to the total universe of our outbound traffic, in August 2009 Google Voice began the practice of restricting calls to certain high-cost destinations. Currently, fewer than 100 U.S. telephone numbers are restricted based on an application of these filters.

For a couple of technology giants, they sure are good at tennis. The ball is now back in AT&T’s court!

Comments


About the Author:
Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world's most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian. You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.
ITGovNews is brought to you by:

SecurityConfig.com NetworkingFiles.com
NetworkNewz.com WebProASP.com
PerlProNews.com SQLProNews.com
SysAdminNews DevWebPro.com
LinuxProNews.com WirelessProNews.com
CProgrammingTrends.com ITCertificationNews.com


About ITGovNews
Get the latest information for the IT professional.



-- ITGovNews is an iEntry, Inc. publication --
iEntry, Inc. 2549 Richmond Rd. Lexington KY, 40509
2009 iEntry, Inc. All Rights Reserved Privacy Policy Legal

archives | advertising info | news headlines | free newsletters | comments/feedback | submit article


ITGovNews News Archives About Us Feedback ITGovNews Home Page About Article Archive News Downloads WebProWorld Forums Jayde iEntry Advertise Contact