Summary
AT&T’s second letter to the FCC still does not cite customer incidents of public disservice, but instead provides research from employees searching for Google blocked calls.
Analysis
The second letter to the FCC from the same AT&T regulatory attorney about Google Voice convolutes blocked calls and “traffic pumpers” in rural areas. Traffic pumping to maximize call charges is a public disservice that the FCC has to address. And the House of Representatives has already asked for evidence from the four major wireline carriers of AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and Qwest. The letter describes how AT&T employees used Google search to find rural numbers that Google Voice blocked. The cited examples are a convent for Benedict nuns and the campaign office of a Congress Representative in Minnesota.
The FCC can only regulate that which has a likelihood of occurrence. There have to be incidents of disservice. AT&T’s examples are infrequent calls, and there is no evidence that someone could not find a way to call the convent or the campaign office. As Google has pointed out, their service is free and calls can still be made on regular lines. Surprisingly, AT&T used employee time to test for Google calls blocked to the convent and campaign office. The FCC focus has to be that traffic pumpers to rural areas for financial exploitation are a disservice in U.S. telecom.
Gregg Kail, MBA consults with leading institutions through GLG
Analyses are solely the work of the authors and have not been edited or endorsed by GLG.
