The latest news out of the normally sluggish FCC is quite a change of pace. Just three days after The New York Times ran a story on Apple refusing to carry Google Voice in the iTunes App Store for the iPhone the FCC started asking questions about it. Yes, the FCC was looking to dance without even waiting to be asked. I'm a bit worried for the toes of its reluctant dancing partners.

According to press reports, the Google Voice rejection had happened a few weeks earlier but the news broke on July 28. On July 31 the FCC sent letters to Apple, Google and AT&T asking some pointed questions about what happened. As far as I
can tell no one formally asked the FCC to get involved this time. (The FCC had been asked by Skype back in February 2007 to take a look at the same sort of thing.)

But that request seemed to fade away after the FCC asked for comments on Skype's request, which the FCC had assigned the identifier "RM-11361." There were press reports at the time that the FCC had rejected the request, but that might not be the end of the story.

The FCC asked Apple why the Google Voice application had been rejected and if Apple had acted alone. It also asked whether AT&T had anything to do with the rejection, what power AT&T has over which applications are accepted, what other applications have been rejected and why.

Apple may have its work cut out for itself to explain how the evaluation and approval process runs since, by all reports, Apple has raised capriciousness to an art form in the way it runs the App Store.

The FCC asked AT&T some of the same questions about its power over what is accepted in the App Store, asked about any other VoIP applications running on other AT&T phones, and inquired about any limitations AT&T has stuck in user agreements.

Finally, the FCC asked Google for a description of Google Voice, what Apple had told Google about why Apple had said no to the application, what other applications Google had in the Apple App Store and what process Google uses for applications in its own App Store for Android phones.

In each case the FCC also asked some other questions, but the above lists cover the high points. The FCC asked for answers by Aug. 21, and told the companies that they could ask for parts of their responses to be kept confidential as long as the requests met federal requirements.