Apple, AT&T and Google on Friday all replied to the FCC’s letters of inquiry regarding the companies’ roles in the rejection of the Google Voice application by Apple’s App Store, with Apple saying it hasn’t actually rejected the application – it just hasn’t been approved.

As part of a wider directive from the Obama Administration to investigate competition in the wireless industry, the FCC asked the three companies to explain what exactly Google Voice is and why it was rejected from the Apple App Store.

Google described its service as an “enhanced voice and data messaging application that provides number management and related services to users who have one or more existing wireline or mobile phone services.” Additionally, Google acknowledged that users can make calls using the service, which Google said, “utilizes the carrier voice network from the application.”

But it wasn’t use of the carrier’s network to place calls that bothered Apple. The iPhone maker denied allegations that it has rejected the Google Voice app at all. A letter from the company stated that Apple “continues to study it. The application has not been approved because, as submitted for review, it appears to alter the iPhone’s distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface, for telephone calls, text messaging, and voicemail.”

AT&T and Apple denied any kind of collusion with AT&T in the review, approval or rejection of the application. AT&T saw a backlash after the application was rejected as many critics of the move accused the carrier of asking Apple to reject the application.

Both companies acknowledged certain contractual obligations designed to protect AT&T’s network health and the iPhone’s integrity. For instance, Apple noted that “there is a provision in Apple’s agreement with AT&T that obligates Apple not to include functionality in any Apple phone that enables a customer to use AT&T’s cellular network service to originate or terminate a VoIP session without obtaining AT&T’s permission.” Further, Apple acknowledged that it did not know if there was a VoIP element to Google Voice.

AT&T did say it would review its policy regarding VoIP applications running on its network, stating: “We plan to take a fresh look at possibly authorizing VoIP capabilities on the iPhone for use on AT&T’s 3G network. AT&T will promptly update the Commission regarding any such change in its policies.”

Meanwhile, VoIP service provider Skype released a statement applauding AT&T’s willingness to “take a fresh look at authorizing VoIP capabilities on the iPhone over AT&T’s 3G network.”Because VoIP services allow cheap voice calls and messaging, most have been relegated to only working over a Wi-Fi connection.

Mobile browsing is seen as the promise (and sometimes bane) of mobile content…while Apple’s (NSDQ: AAPL) Safari browser garnered a lot of attention for its “new features”, it was pointed out that other browsers had those features quite a while before. Laptop has done a not-very-scientific test of 3 mobile browsers—the Apple Safari on a 3G iPhone, Opera 9.5.1 beta and Skyfire beta on an AT&T (NYSE: T) Tilt. The results show a significant difference between Skyfire (fastest) Safari (second fastest) and Opera (slowest). One of the big things to come out of it are all the disclaimers which need to be added, which show that which mobile browser you should (or can) use depends on which phone you have. For example, Safari is twice as fast as Opera, but you need an iPhone. Opera probably runs on the most number of handsets and has more features than Skyfire, but is slower…so how much do you want those extra features? As Gizmodo points out Skyfire is server assisted, so a fairer comparison would have been with Opera Mini which also preformats web pages on a server before sending to the handset. The upshot is that if you make a conscious decision as to which mobile browser to use, it’s going to depend on your handset and what sort of browsing you like to do, and the upshot of that is that the mobile browser market is likely to remain a lot more fragmented than the desktop browsing market.

A couple of new services are sending video to the iPhone, which has been hampered by a narrow choice of supported video formats. NBC is streaming episodes of 30 Rock and The Office to the iPhone over the WiFi network reports NYT quoting Silicon Alley Insider. Orb has also launched a native client for the iPhone and iPod Touch, letting users stream video from their PC reports The Register. Orbs client works over the 2.75G Edge network.

The important thing is that these methods bypass Apple’s (NSDQ: AAPL) store, which was pointed out by J. B. Perrette, the president of digital distribution for NBC Universal: “One other benefit of streaming is that it can reach users of a device like the iPhone without having to cut deals with the phone’s maker. Web video, he said, “is only using the hardware as an access point to the content.” The same goes for the data channel.