The FCC Questions Apple, AT&T and Google:
Last Tuesday (July 28th) when I was interviewed for the NY Times story, “Even Google Is Blocked With Apps for iPhone”, one of the questions I was asked was who I thought was the reason behind Apple's decision to block Google Voice from the iPhone Apps store.
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple's rejection of Google Voice from the iPhone App Store has escalated from an app-approval dispute into a formal regulatory event: the FCC confirmed on August 1st that it is looking into AT&T's role in the rejection and has opened inquiries questioning Apple, AT&T, and Google directly. The speed of the commission's response is itself notable — Silicon Alley Insider flagged how fast the FCC moved from news story to investigation.
The central unresolved question, echoed in Jeff Pulver's account of his New York Times interview, is attribution: it remains unclear whether Apple or carrier partner AT&T made the blocking call, since neither company has owned the decision publicly. That ambiguity is exactly what a multi-party FCC inquiry is designed to resolve, and it frames why this matters beyond one app — TechCrunch's framing of the inquiry as an effort to smash open the iPhone captures the stakes for how closed the App Store model is allowed to be.
First-order effects
- Apple, AT&T, and Google now face direct FCC questions that force each to document its role in the Google Voice rejection — ending the plausible-deniability standoff over who blocked the app.
Second-order effects
- Every carrier-tied handset maker must now weigh App Store curation decisions against the risk of drawing the same federal scrutiny AT&T and Apple are under, raising the compliance cost of rejecting high-profile third-party apps.
Third-order effects
- If the inquiry produces findings, it sets a precedent for the FCC treating device-software gatekeeping as within its remit — extending telecom open-access enforcement into the smartphone application layer, a structural shift regulators have not previously attempted at scale.
The trend: Regulators are beginning to treat smartphone platforms and their carrier partners as gatekeepers subject to the same open-access scrutiny long applied to telecom networks.