News Corp. Weighs an Exclusive Alliance With Bing. After net neutrality, will we need "Google neutrality?". The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has mounted a recent push to turn network neutrality "principles" into official regulations—and in doing so has stirred up the net neutrality hornet's nest once again.
The issues involved are thorny when you wade deep into the weeds, but consumer-level support for network neutrality seems largely driven by simple principle: AT&T should not be "speeding up" websites with deep pockets, leaving everyone else to languish in the slow lane. This was famously what AT&T Chairman Ed Whitacre wanted to do back in 2005 when he declared that Internet companies would not be able to "use my pipes free. " The scheme that he envisioned was a basic bit of price discrimination; charge extra fees to those who could afford to pay in order to maximize profits. But here's the thing—price discrimination happens all the time (US college fees vary widely based on one's ability to pay, for instance). AT&T calls Google a hypocrite on Net neutrality.
AT&T is accusing Google of being a hypocrite when it comes to Net neutrality because it blocks certain phone calls on its Google Voice service.
The carrier has written a letter to the Federal Communications Commission claiming that Google has violated the agency's Net neutrality principles, which Google has long supported. Google defended its position in a blog post written by Richard Whitt, Google's main lobbyist and telecommunications lawyer in Washington, that basically said AT&T is comparing apples and oranges. In a letter to the FCC filed on Friday, AT&T said Google is violating the fourth principle in the FCC's Internet Policy Statement, which calls for fair competition among providers of networks, applications, services, and content, as it blocks telephone calls made using Google Voice service to certain rural communities.