The FCC-powered feud between AT&T and Google over Google Voice just won't end. In fact, it just keeps getting worse.

A quick recap: Apple and AT&T allegedly banned Google Voice from the iPhone. Google called it anti-competitive. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) started asking questions. Apple and AT&T denied that they rejected the app. AT&T and Google started filing unhappy letters with the FCC. Oh, and then they started sparring over phone sex lines.

Had enough? We have, but this battle is not going away anytime soon. Today, AT&T fired back at Google in a new, 13 page letter outlining what AT&T considers Google's hypocrisy, highlighting incidents of violating FCC rules and just all around based Google.

AT&T focused on the net neutrality debate, launching immediately into an attack against Google, claiming that it's following a double-standard for openness. It immediately rejects Google's claims that Google Voice blocks calls to rural phones because of sex lines, but then quickly turns to "an even more important question:"

If the Commission is going to be a “smart cop on the beat preserving a free and open Internet,” then shouldn’t its “beat” necessarily cover the entire Internet neighborhood, including Google?

Yes, AT&T wants the FCC to police the entire Internet. Oh, it doesn't end there. Here's one of our favorite quotes from the letter, where AT&T directly assaults Google's "Don't Be Evil" company motto:

Of course, as a company whose motto is “don’t be evil,” Google should have no objection to abiding by the Internet Policy Statement and other net neutrality principles it advocates with respect to Google Voice and all of the Internet-based services, applications and content that it offers. And as an agency committed to “preserving a free and open Internet,” the Commission should show no hesitation in ensuring its Internet principles are applied evenhandedly to the “network providers, application and service providers, and content nproviders” – including Google – who are expressly subject to them today. As the Wall Street Journal aptly reported, however, the call blocking incident with Google Voice has exposed Google’s true agenda for adulterating the Internet Policy Statement: “The Internet giant wants cumbersome [net neutrality] rules applied to everyone—except Google.” In other words, Google wants the Commission to rig the game in its favor by rewriting the Commission’s broadband principles to cover only broadband Internet access providers, while giving Google a free pass to discriminate against whatever calls, websites, applications or content it pleases.

If you want to read the whole thing, we've embedded it below, but you get the point. AT&T thinks Google is a hypocrite, Google thinks AT&T is anti-competitive, and the FCC is just in the middle of this crossfire.

Here's the question we're asking at this point: can someone please end this already? There has been lots of rhetoric but no solutions. Someone needs to step up and make a compromise or a ruling before this thing gets driven any deeper into the mud.







