FCC sees Google Voice rejection as trigger to scrutinize US cellular
Published: 24 August, 2009
READ MORE: US | Google | FCC | Regulator | VoIP
As more and more pressure is applied to the US regulator, the FCC, it has come out and said publicly that it plans to do a root and branch examination of the US cellular industry. In the agenda for its coming meeting this Thursday the Commission said it will consider a Notice of Inquiry soliciting information for the next annual report to Congress on the status of competition in the mobile wireless market.
The new broom which is the Obama selected Chairman of the FCC, Julius Genachowski, has already come out at the beginning of August and said that "exclusive handsets" would be examined in some detail, but now it appears that any investigation will be far more wide ranging, with a brief to examine what does, and what does not, encourage innovation in wireless.
The new mood has been contributed in no small way by the apparent rejection of Google Voice on the Apple iPhone.
Google voice has quietly emerged this year as a VoIP service which came out of the company's acquisition in 2007 of GrandCentral and is a set of services, controlled from a web interface, which allow for a single phone number across all devices including mobile, a single voicemail, offers speech to text capabilities, call screening and blocking and conference calling. Google Voice also lets you store SMS messages online, choose which phone rings, based on who calls you and allows different greetings for each caller. Google will add other services as the system develops.
A lengthy but somehow vague Apple statement on the subject in answer to questions from the FCC, effectively said that the Google Voice application had not been rejected, just not accepted yet, and raised issues over it changing the look and feel of the iPhone, replacing services which the iPhone already offered and then suggested that by taking data away and storing it on Google servers, Apple would lose control of the data and was seeking re-assurances from Google about how this data would be used. By implication Apple was trying to suggest that Google holding data is sinister.
Apple argued that it also rejected any other application with degraded the core experience of the iPhone, and gave examples of the Mobilemax GVDialer, Riverturn's VoiceCentral and Sean Kovacs GV Mobile, which it has also rejected.
Of course in those cases it is not denying iPhone users access to a system which is already working across many other platforms and which already has a large number of users. But similarly those companies and individuals who have had iPhone app rejections don't have the political lobbying power of Google, something that Apple will now have to contend with.
Apple confirmed that it acted alone in the decision (although there has not actually been a decision) to not allow Google Voice, without discussing it with AT&T, but contradictorily confirmed that it is obliged not to allow VoIP apps without AT&T's permission. Apple said it has approved numerous VoIP applications including Skype, Nimbuzz and iCall, for use over WiFi, but not over AT&T's 3G network.
The FCC will discuss Thursday at its regular meeting overall wireless competition, barriers to market entry and consumer billing, including how wireless contracts are billed.
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