Call-blocking battle heats up: Sprint Nextel files lawsuit against alleged ‘traffic pumping’

Sprint Nextel Corp. has joined the cadre of telecom companies who have sued small Iowa operators and Internet calling services for alleged “traffic pumping,” while the small companies themselves have formed a coalition to formally oppose the telcos’ efforts.
Sprint Nextel’s complaints virtually mirrored those of earlier filings by AT&T Inc. and Qwest Communications International Inc. The carrier said that rural local exchange companies in Iowa have been partnering with companies that offer free conference or international calls and adult chat lines
“Make no mistake-this is not just a billing dispute among phone companies,” said Kent Nakamura, VP of telecom management for Sprint Nextel. He described the situation as “a continued pattern of illegal arbitrage on the part of certain companies-a scheme that attempts to pick our pockets and threatens our customers’ access to unlimited long-distance service.”
Sprint Nextel also said that the RLECs in Iowa had within the past year “adopted significantly higher access charges-up to 13 cents per minute-for every minute of every call a Sprint Nextel customer makes to the RLEC’s local calling area. That’s about 26 times the access charges typically charged by other local phone companies.”
On the other side, more than a dozen RLECs and conferencing companies say they have formed the Coalition for Carrier Neutrality “to counteract the claims by AT&T and other large carriers that are using bullying tactics to distract from their accountability for over a month of call blocking.” Seven of those companies are also suing AT&T for not paying access charges related to the calls.
The coalition claims that the call blocking by the major telcos has not stopped, but only lessened, going from no calls completed to 50% to 80% completion rates. The companies had protested the call blocking to the Federal Communications Commission, which responded by prodding the telcos to unblock the numbers while it looked into the matter.
The FCC said in a statement that its “priority is to ensure that consumer calls are not blocked, and we have taken swift action upon hearing complaints to ensure that any blocking behavior stops. We are currently hearing from both sides in this dispute, and therefore won’t comment further at this point. But we continue to make clear that calls cannot be blocked.”