They're calling it a "political stunt" and "a bid to undermine Web-based competition." So what is it? A new deep packet inspection gadget or astroturf group? An inflammatory youtube video? Nope. It's a call from AT&T to apply net neutrality rules to the application that you have to get on a waiting list to use, but not to fight about: Google Voice. The letter is a "red herring," warned Free Press hours after the AT&T filing, "to distract attention from the important work the FCC has begun on Network Neutrality."

Looks like we're into the gloves-off phase of the net neutrality debate. Up until now the dialogue over Federal Communications Commission Chair Julius Genachowski's call for tougher Internet nondiscrimination rules has been relatively calm, with the expected pushback coming from the usual suspects—big ISPs dismissing them as unnecessary and think tanks branding them unconstitutional. Then on Friday AT&T senior Vice President Robert Quinn urged the agency to give Google—"one of the most noisome trumpeters of so-called 'net neutrality' regulation"—a taste of its own regulatory medicine.

Play by the rules

Quinn's letter noted that Google Voice "systematically" blocks calls to various rural areas. The move allows it to save money in regions where access rates are especially high. But this kind of restricting is something that the FCC forbade AT&T and other common carriers from doing in 2007. Since Google is not a common carrier in the eyes of the Commission, the feature "has claimed for itself a significant advantage over providers offering competing services," AT&T complained. The filing offered a paragraph that sorta kinda implies that Google Voice might actually be something like a common carrier, but insisted that even if it isn't: "The Commission cannot, through inaction or otherwise, give Google a special privilege to play by its own rules while the rest of the industry, including those who compete with Google, must instead adhere to Commission regulations."

It's time to "level the playing field," AT&T urged, and "order Google to play by the same rules as its competitors."

"AT&T is trying to make this about Google's support for an open Internet ," replied Google. "But the comparison just doesn't fly."

Obviously there's gigabytes of irony in AT&T's complaint, since the FCC is running an investigation into why Apple has blocked Google Voice from its AT&T network connected iPhone (AT&T says it had nothing to do with the move, while Apple insists the company is still talking with Google about the feature). But not only did AT&T ask the FCC to get tough on the app in question, it urged enforcement in the name of the last principle of the Commission's four part Internet Policy Statement, guaranteeing consumers access to the legal devices of their choice on the 'Net. "Consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers," part four of the Policy Statement declares.

"This fourth principle," Quinn's letter insisted, "cannot fairly be read to embrace competition in which one provider unilaterally appropriates to itself regulatory advantages over its competitors. By openly flaunting the call blocking prohibition that applies to its competitors, Google is acting in a manner inconsistent with the fourth principle."

AT&T—champion of net neutrality. It was too much for Free Press, who's rapid-fire response team called the letter bunk. "To be clear, the FCC's open Internet principles apply to Internet Service Providers—those companies that control the on-ramps to the information superhighway," the group's research director Derek Turner declared. "The Internet Policy Statement applies only to Internet access services. Whatever regulatory or technical classifications it may eventually fall under, Google Voice is certainly not an Internet access service."

Google quickly responded as well. Company attorney Richard Whitt expressed sympathy with the fact that common carriers have to extend calls into areas where dodgy providers charge high access rates, then engage in "traffic pumping" deals in which they split revenue with adult chat and conference call services. But Google Voice is not a member of that tribe, Whitt argued. It's a free, web-based application. It's not a substitute for traditional phone service. You have to have a wired or wireless line to use it. And the feature is currently available by invitation only.

"AT&T is trying to make this about Google's support for an open Internet ," Whitt's response concluded, "but the comparison just doesn't fly."

Squaring the circle

Other Google Voice watchers think the issue more complicated. Financial Times columnist John Gapper finds himself scratching his head about the whole issue. "So Google is arguing for others to be bound by network neutrality and, on the other hand, arguing against itself being bound by common carriage," Gapper writes. "There is probably a way to square this circle, but it strikes me as an intellectual contradiction."

And there's a certain logic to Quinn's observation that to the extent that worriers at the FCC and elsewhere focus on "gatekeepers" to the Internet, e.g., ISPs, "that concern must necessarily apply to application, service, and content providers that, like Google, can exercise their power to control which websites consumers will see and which consumers' calls will be blocked."

So you can read AT&T's missive as a sneaky attempt to muddy the regulatory waters, or as Free Press put it, a political stunt. Or you can read it as a tacit recognition on the part of the nation's biggest telco that Internet nondiscrimination enforcement in some form or another is probably a done deal. Genachowski has the three votes he needs to solidify the IP Statement into concrete rules. And if the courts say that the FCC doesn't have the authority now, Congress will fix that later.

So if net neutrality in one form or another is coming to a broadband powered theater near you, the question for AT&T is how to make the most of it.. or the least.