Last week we noted how AT&T managed to very cleverly deflect attention from AT&T and Apple's own anti-competitive behavior by highlighting how Google Voice blocks FreeConferenceCall.com. Of course everybody these days is blocking such services, including Speakeasy, Level 3, Viatalk, Magic Jack, Google and even at one point AT&T, but don't tell a well lobbied Congress that.

Such services exist due to regulatory loopholes that allow "traffic pumping," a practice that allows small phone companies to sock bigger phone companies with huge bills for voice connections. AT&T's now extending their campaign by lobbying lawmakers to investigate Google for being naughty:The letter essentially mirrors the letter (pdf) sent to the FCC last week by AT&T, showing you how quickly AT&T lobbyists can get their personal bipartisan butlers in Congress to help them. The push for an "investigation" also runs simultaneously with a smear campaign being waged by paid AT&T policy wonks like Scott Cleland or the Discovery Institute's Bret Swanson. While AT&T does want traffic pumping rules reformed, the primary goal here is to deflect attention toward Google and away from AT&T, while conflating traffic pumping with net neutrality.

Perhaps the attention will bring pressure on the FCC to finally get around to shoring up the regulatory loopholes that allow traffic pumping to occur in the first place. The FCC has been looking into refining the rules since 2007, but it's a touchy issue because such services are so popular among consumers. Regulation is inconsistent on this front, and most everybody agrees (including both AT&T and Google) that the rules allowing such services need reworking.

On the other hand, AT&T is using these Senators (whose understanding of campaign contributions far exceeds their understanding of telecom) as marionettes in a campaign aimed at deflecting criticism of AT&T's practices on the network neutrality front. An "investigation" into why Google is being "unfair to our rural constituents" superficially omits the fact that this is something a huge number of companies are doing, and why exactly they're doing it. It does however put Google's name in the press as a "bad guy," which would seemingly be the point.