Google: We're Blocking Fewer Nun Calls - Says they're blocking less than 100 traffic pumping numbers...Says they're blocking less than 100 traffic pumping numbers... 12:01PM Thursday Oct 29 2009 by Karl Bode tags: business · VoIP · content · Oddities · net-neutrality We've frequently explored how a growing number of VoIP companies were blocking FreeConferencecall.com, because the service relies on a practice known as "traffic pumping," a regulatory loophole that allows small, rural telcos to sock bigger carriers with huge connectivity fees. A few years back, AT&T tried to block access to such services but were yelled at by the FCC because it breaks common carrier laws. VoIP operators are under no such restrictions, which is why everybody from Speakeasy to MajicJack freely blocks access. Free conference services users may not like it, but given they're not a common carrier, Google Voice is similarly under no restrictions, and has blocked user access to these services as well. Of course the FCC knows all of this, given they've been sitting on their hands since 2007 in addressing the regulatory loophole that allows traffic pumping to exist. Reshaping the rules means killing off these services, which are obviously popular among consumers. So the FCC did nothing, and figured they'd get around to it later. Which brings us to this month. In kind of an ingenious move, AT&T had some of their best friends in Congress push for an investigation into Google for "neutrality" infringements, and wrote a letter to the FCC complaining that Google was blocking phone service to nuns. The move helped AT&T deflect attention away from their blocking of Google Voice, created the possibility of additional regulation on Google, and gained additional attention on traffic pumping. AT&T in short managed to conflate network neutrality with traffic pumping in the press and public eye. Despite the ironic fact that traffic pumping exists largely because the FCC did nothing about it, the FCC agreed to an investigation, and sent a letter to Google asking for details about Google's call blocking. Responding today via the Google policy blog, Google says they're now blocking "fewer than 100" phone numbers, all of which are engaged in traffic pumping. Again, there's nothing illegal about what Google is doing, and this is an issue of regulatory loopholes left open by the FCC, not network neutrality. Hopefully, the FCC's investigation involves investigating themselves.
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The idea is that a maximally useful public information network aspires to treat all content, sites, and platforms equally. This allows the network to carry every form of information and support every kind of application. The principle suggests that information networks are often more valuable when they are less specialized – when they are a platform for multiple uses, present and future. (For people who know more about network design, what is just described is similar to the "end-to-end" design principle).
-- »timwu.org/network_neutrality.html