Why Google Doesn't Like Its Phone Bill

When you call Grandma on her farm in Iowa, your long-distance phone company pays her local phone company an access fee. That's fine. It's much higher than elsewhere but few calls go to her and her neighbors, so the fees don't add up quickly. And it's a business-to-business transaction. You, the caller, aren't even aware of the fees paid on your behalf. But Google is aware. It has entered the long-distance phone business, having introduced this year a service, Google Voice, that includes the ability to make free long-distance calls anywhere in the United States. It knows that access fees are a part of the phone business. But it quickly noticed that a few numbers in sparsely populated areas were accounting for a disproportionate percentage of Google Voice's total costs. In a company blog post last month, Google said some rural phone companies partner with "sex chat lines and 'free' conference calling centers to drive high volumes of traffic" in what is called "traffic pumping" in the telecom industry.