Last month I wrote about the loophole in the telecom settlement scheme whereby companies such as AllFreeCalls could strike deals with CLECs in sparsely populated regions to split the higher-than-normal termination charges they collected from ILECs. A lot of people speculated that this scheme only succeeded because the amounts being paid were still round-off errors in the grand scheme of the ILECs costs. Apparently AT&T noticed when their monthly bill from the Superior Telephone Co-operative in Iowa went from $2,000 to $2,000,000 and they have sued in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa. Their argument is that since the calls aren't really terminated in Iowa, they don't owe Iowa's termination charges.
The case, 4:07-cv-00043-JEG-CFB AT&T Corp v. Superior Telephone Cooperative et al, names a number of defendants, including some "to be determined":
- Free Call Planet LLC
- Does 1-10
- Roes 1-10
- Future Fone Services, Inc.
- Superior Telephone Cooperative
- The Farmers Telephone Company of Riceville, Iowa
- Interstate 35 Telephone Company d/b/a Interstate Communications Company
- Great Lakes Communication Corp.
- Aventure Communication Technology LLC
- Futurephone.com LLC
You can read the complaint here.
