Apple, Google Voice, and number portability

There's quite a bit of finger pointing about why Apple banned the Google Voice application from the iPhone store. And now that the FCC is officially investigating we can be assured it will end up in a legal morass.

In trying to figure out what exactly is at the heart of the problem (don't say Apple's "control issues"), I heard an interesting perspective on this brouhaha from Todd Barr, vice president of marketing at Bandwidth.com, a nationwide CLEC voice carrier that sells voice and data services to businesses. (Note: Fellow CNET blogger Matt Asay provides a good overview of the company's FreePBX product here.)

Barr believes that what this controversy boils down to is number portability. Increasingly, our phone numbers (especially mobile numbers) have become our identity, and the FCC enacted the number portability act some time ago to make sure that businesses and consumers can take their number with them when they switch carriers. The FCC believes this is important because number portability ensures competition among providers and allows businesses and consumers to keep their number to ensure continuity of their identity.

At the time, the FCC contemplated carrier competition - but now, Barr described, there are these "meta" carriers, like Apple, that have a key control point in the telecom ecosystem: the phone user experience. "Just like users want to control their number and identity, they also will increasingly want to control their own telephony experience - like having one number, that can ring to any phone you specify, and even display the correct called-ID number when you call from any phone. Ultimately, I think the crux of the issues is how far the idea of number portability extends to the entire user telephony experience, not just the phone number."

This will be an increasingly important issue to carriers as they experiment with fixed-mobile convergence features that let business users control their call flows in more intuitive ways, such as sharing one number and common features across wireless and fixed networks.

It will also become very important for services like Google voice that abstract the number from the carrier and make the networks dumb pipes.

For users to ultimately be in control of their telephony experience and to encourage the next wave of telephony innovation, the concept of portability will need to extend beyond just numbers to the telephony user experience.

Follow me on Twitter @daveofdoom

[fazalmajid]

Number portability is a poor analogy. What he is really getting at is that a newly customer-recentered FCC is concerned about the anticompetitive effect of artificial switching costs, of which phone numbers are just one example.

By the same logic, handset exclusivity, fixed length contracts and phone subsidies with stiff penalties for early termination should fall by the wayside.

[daverosenberg]

Agreed--the anti-competitive aspect is the main issue, though realistically carriers will get away with a lot in terms of handsets until subsidies are dropped entirely. They can easily make the argument that it's in the customers interest to get a new phone at a cheap price.

[PostNoComments]

The FCC had been slow to stop the anticompetitive practices you mentioned and that's why the U.S. is now 5 years behind the rest of the industrialized world in wireless communications.

[anotherguy14]

Number portability...Hmm...Does this mean that Alltel (now a part of Verizon) was supposed to port my telephone number from T-mobile. They refused to do so.

Sometimes the more trendy issues tend to overshadow the law and regulation that is already in place.

[minist3r]

no it doesnt the wireless carrier owns your phone number and what the fcc did is make it available for sale to the wireless carrier you want to switch to if they dont want to buy for you then I would not give them my business

[Viv Collins]

The problem is that people are not numbers and never have been, telephone numbers were a technology fix of the early telephone system, Google is moving away from numbers as was said and dumbing down the network, thats a good thing too.

Do you still use a numbered email account? whys that then ;-)

[natedogg0511]

Could you imagine if you were allowed to just make up your own phone ID just like you can with email. The things people would come up with...

[cvaldes1831]

Apple's actions are puzzling since there are other Google Voice-like services that offer very similar features (including number portability) and have existing apps in the App Store. RingCentral is one; they charge for their services which are geared toward businesses, but the functionality is very similar to GrandCentral, er, I mean Google Voice.

Go ahead and look at the App Store. There's a free RingCentral Mobile client that provides eerily similar functionality to the now-deleted GV Mobile, Voice Central, and defunct GrandDialer apps.

[missingxtension2]

we all know that companies will try to get away with what ever they please.
What they need to do is give the customers more power.
But what does more power mean?
Well for one thing, when a customer complains it should not take a law suit for an investigation to take place.
Then of course that would mean that the government would also have to do its job.

[freemarket--2008]

You should volunteer to work at a customer service desk for a few weeks and deal with all the idiots--that will cure you of this attitude. ;-)

[bigpicture]

This is certainly one side of the issue. But looking at it from up higher, where is this phone number/voip thing headed? It used to be phone number associated with a physical address, then a particular portable device, then there are now devices such as MagicJack that can be plugged into any internet connected device anywhere and that then becomes your phone number. Most of these devices currently have North American phone numbers so if I take it to China and phone home it is like phoning to next door. Kind of makes the concept of long distance tolls obsolete. This Google Grand Central is headed in that direction and worrisome for the Telcos.

[daverosenberg]

Yes--Google Voice (regardless of whether Google is the winner) is the right direction for telecom to go in for us to have innovative new products. The fact that all the mobile carriers are sheep following Apple's lead will come back around to walled gardens ala AOL.

[ckh1272]

Sorry Dave but i have to disagree with part of that statement. "The fact that all the mobile carriers are sheep following Apple's lead will come back around to walled gardens ala AOL."?? You mean like the walled gardens of Verizon, Sprint, AT&T that have been pulling these "feature lockout" stunts for the last fifteen+ years or so? I agree with the rest as these telecoms and handset makers need to start listening to customers and customers need to stop with taking the shaft from these companies.

[daverosenberg]

Sorry, should have clarified. The carriers have made it very difficult to do anything that's outside their walls. The unfortunate aspect of the iPhone is the Apple approval process and the semi-walled garden of the app store. I fear that Apple's success will make it worse, not better.

[delfinera]

Here, in Brazil, since 2008 we have total phone number portability, not just in mobile but even in wired and IP networks. If I have an IP phone number and want to move it to a mobile cel phone, IN BRAZIL PEOPLE HAVE THE CHOICE FREEDOM!

[have_nuke]

I have a GV number. I love the fact that it will always be my number, no matter where I go, or what carrier I CHOOSE to go with. I also have a home phone, a personal cell, a work cell, and a work landline. It is amazing to me that I now have the freedom to only carry one of those things with me and still be able to conduct business. That being said, I believe that the Telco's should be worried. If North America catches on to this, they will become exactly what the article says "dumb pipes". Power to the consumer:)

[Deuce2High]

Control Issues

[PersonaForm]

The telcos ought to be jumping for joy as people flock to these various other numbers from which to conduct their business and/or managed identity(s) per se. That's because all calls to and from these numbers are by default off network and subject to unconditional "primary minute(s) depletion". The more menus and options these numbers offer, the long the caller will remain accessing them through the telco's pipe on a per minute basis. That means more likely overage(s) and minute block upgrades by customers as a pre-emptive action to avoid runaway costs through over-runs. The apps available to the IPhone that will enable and potentiate the use of these off-network numbers are like mini slot machines for ATT and any other carrier that assists in making these apps available to their current crop of phones they distribute. The ability to check calls to these numbers from the internet and respond with SMS would in deed reduce some amount of network traffic that the telcos might otherwise have for these functions, but, in the end, when a user wishes to take advantage of the features available to them from having and effectively using one of these new age numbers it will inevitably result in more minutes being used. Say good by to friends and family and in-network calls that eat away at the "profitable minutes" that are the real money points for the cellular telcos. I think we will see lots of jockeying and juxtaposition by the carriers to try to adjust and respond to change that uses make in their way of managing their communications identity.

[AppleSuxLeo]

They are blocking it because they only care about ARPU.
Apple doesn`t care what you want. Use ANDROID !

[dennisheadley]

While I like the idea of the number portability, I have to think that what we as consumers want to do with our products and what the cell carriers need to have happen are not always the same thing. I read a lot of posts that say we as consumers should be able to use VOIP, Media Streaming and other high bandwidth services over their 3G networks. I would love to do all that myself, but i realize that if their business model and cost of operating the network, leasing cell tower use from 3rd parties or competitors in certain areas, running their own towers, gateways to the internet from the cell network etc. is based on customers paying for voice+data packages.

If everyone switched to doing everything over the data side of things, dropped the voice packages down to the minimum required minutes and stopped using SMS/MMS messaging plans. I can see the carriers going from making large profits to having to charge much higher rates for their data plans just to stay in operation. I can see where there won't be any $29 unlimited data plans, they will be $99 data plans for the lowest tier plans and go up from there.

[clynx]

They aren't selling a phone. It is now a data meter. Data caps are censorship.

[Thrudheim]

It remains to be seen what will happen when the contract expires. It is very clear that Apple is not happy with AT&T in many respects. The fact that AT&T has tried to deflect blame to Apple regarding the Google Voice stuff has got to grate on Apple execs in a big way. Here's to a future in which Apple pokes AT&T in the eye and moves on.