While Google Voice is nowhere to be found on the iPhone and apps that made use of the service were killed, Apple claims and AT&T claims that nobody did nothing wrong and no one's to blame.  

When UK mobile carrier O2 denied being behind the hangup of an app that found cheaper alternative landline numbers, the 0870 app, mysteriously bogged down at the App Store for over a year, suddenly found itself available. Fancy that.  

What 0870 does is lets you enter an 08* number and scans a database until it either outputs a 01* or 02* number or does not. The 08 designates a pay number which costs the dialer an additional 35 pence per minute to call (on top of your paid for minutes), while the 01 or 02 designates a free to call number for the same location. 

 

 

 

This free to download app (not available in the US, for obvious reasons) languished in the App Store for 429 days while owners of the Google Android model phone have had it all that time. When developer Simon Maddox complained to O2, he was told they had no problem with the app at all.

When Maddox contacted Apple, he claims an unnamed source inside the company told him: "I was told that... they [O2] had an issue with this." Maddox further claims his source got back to him around a week later to tell them that no one at the carrier "nor anyone at BT [another British carrier], would be happy about this service."

The developer goes on to say that he was prepared to release the app for jailbroken iPhones, and that he had some back and forth with O2, but that "within hours" of O2 releasing a statement to the Guardian Technology saying  "We... confirmed within two days of the initial contact that we would not have a problem" the app was approved and in the store. 

One wonders what kind of stranglehold American carriers such as AT&T must have when Google, one of the largest digital companies in existence, with an app that actually still requires users to use their cell minutes, can't catch a break, but one guy with an app that demonstrably takes money out of the UK carriers' pockets can. It doesn't look good from where we sit, that's for certain.