House Representatives Want Google Voice Investigation FCC Looks for Reasons behind Google Voice Blocked Calls

20 House of Representatives lawmakers have decided to press the FCC to
investigate Google s Google Voice application. The reason behind has
been revealed by AT T a little while ago and it s very simple. Google
Voice blocks certain calls to certain services in order to save you
money. That, however, is not acceptable, is it? And the House seems very
interested in the matter.

Naturally the FCC has responded to this request and a formal inquiry has
been sent to Google. The company has time until October 28 to send a
formal response and we assume that Google will defend itself by stating
only the obvious. Google isn t a phone company and it only offers
certain services for mobile phones. Therefore the company shouldn t be
regulated as a wireless company, right?

What calls does Google Voice Block after all? The application tries to
keep costs down by blocking calls made to certain rural areas,
conference call services and chat lines (read porn). But that shouldn t
happen, should it? A person should be able to make as many phone calls
he or she wants to any number out there.

Who will benefit from this? For the time being at least AT T. With FCC
shifting its attention from the rejection of Google Voice from Apple s
App Store to the blocked calls issue, we re probably not going to see
Google Voice available officially on any iPhone soon. Rumored to be
responsible in part for the whole App Store rejection, AT T, a carrier
that doesn t want to lose revenue because of Google Voice s services was
the one to point out the whole thing in a letter sent to the FCC a few
ago.

And the FCC took it upon them to shed some light regarding the way
Google Voice works. That s right, the commission wants to know all the
details of this application including basic functionalities, the way
calls are made, the way calls are blocked and whether users are informed
by any restrictions or not.

While we wait for Google to make things clearer for the FCC, the House
of Representatives and everyone else that s interested in Google Voice,
tell us about your experience with the application. Has Google Voice
blocked any calls for you lately?