Sat, 10 Oct 2009

Google Voice in Trouble Over Blocked Rural Calls

I don't know who's calls they're blocking - but they're certainly not mine! Worse, this outrage was in part perpetrated by the idiot that represents my district: Steve Buyer. Here's what I had to say to him:

To the Honorable Steve Buyer:

As one of your rural constituents I was utterly appalled at your recent joining in a letter to the FCC trying to get an investigation going into Google Voice. How much is AT&T contributing to your campaign?

I don't know whose calls Google is allegedly blocking but I can tell you this: they're certainly not blocking mine! You have the villains reversed here - I'm a programmer who often works from home. I have AT&T landline service. They're a monopoly in my area, in case you're unfamiliar with how that works: I have no choice at all. So much for the free market. And broadband is not available in my location from AT&T. No timetable from AT&T on when they'll get around to it. There's no cable this far out, so I'm stuck.

I had an AT&T cell phone until a couple of weeks ago when it broke and I canceled service: it never worked at my home anyway. No other major carriers cell service works here, either. There are no towers. Why not? Because the major telecom companies don't want to serve rural areas, despite the constant taxpayer subsidization via the so-called "Universal Service Tax".

I have to have a faster connection to the net to be able so work, so I got the only kind of "broadband" available to me from AT&T - ISDN, which is essentially two shotgunned dial up lines. It costs me about $100/month for only 128K of bandwidth. And I can't get any long distance plan on it, because it's tariffed as a business service. So to call your office on my regular line would cost me 50 cents a minute. Which is the same amount it would cost me to call my daughter in Minnesota.

I just got an invite to Google Voice, and at long last I can make long distance calls from my home without going bankrupt. If you manage to get the FCC to shut this wonderful service down, I swear to all the gods I'll go door to door to every house in the district with my phone bill and an explanation of exactly who is responsible for the continuing rape of rural Indiana residents by telecom big shots.

Sincerely,
Daithi M Haxton

A group of lawmakers wants the FCC to investigate Google Voice over charges the service blocks calls to their rural constituents. Such calls are expensive to connect, but landline carriers are prohibited from blocking them.

(link) [PC World]

Update:Google responds.

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