MisterWebNet

Do No Evil. It's Google's corporate motto. But now Google has been accused of flaunting that principle with the accusation by  one of America's biggest telecommunication's companies that Google is breach the 4th principle of the FCC's Internet Policy Statement. The fourth principle calls on telecommunications companies to provide fair competition in  networks, applications, services, and content - i.e not to discriminate against users based on their location, choice of application and type of content accessed.

Google has been accussed by AT&T of resticting calls to users in rural areas in its Google Voice service. AT&T state that this is a breach in spirit, if not the letter, of the Internet Policy Statement. Robert Quinn, Vice President of AT&T stated that:

"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,"

Google has fired back in a blog post by Richard Whitt - Google's lobbyist. He acknowledged that Google does block calls but said the reason was certain local telephone carriers in rural areas charge AT&T and other long-distance companies especially high rates to connect calls to their networks.

But so what? If AT&T has to pay these charges to connect calls, why not Google? Why does Google get to pick and choose which calls to connect, but the other telecommunications companies cannot? Is Google special? AT&T stated that in 2007, these higher charges had cost it in the region of $250 million - a cost it had no choice but to pay given that its customers are often on flat tariffs i.e phone contracts that pay a flat monthly fee no matter where the calls are place.

Google meanwhile reckons it is above the Internet Principles and should be able to pick and choose who it's customers can call. An absurd position and a flagrant breach of the principles.

Either Google, who has been fully supportive of the Internet Principle's obey them or they are engaged in duplicity and deception. There are no two ways about this.