WASHINGTON-A nasty legal fight has broken out over control of the U.S.-based roaming group that assigns codes enabling foreign travelers to use their mobile phones in the United States.
The Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions has sued Edward Hall and others in Maryland federal court, accusing them of illegally seizing from ATIS the assets and operations of the International Forum on ANSI-41 Standards, or IFAST.
“Harm is being frequented upon the international telecommunications industry as a whole, and specifically the wireless industry that benefits directly from the efficient uninfluenced administration of IFAST by private interests. IRM [international roaming mobile identification numbers] subscribers face the risk of arbitrary fee increases and other unilateral actions determined by defendants based upon their own interests rather than the interests of the industry as a whole,” stated ATIS in its Feb. 14 complaint.
IFAST, which collects annual subscriber fees in connection with the distribution of international roaming numbers, is believed to have generated more than $1 million in revenue over the past four years. IFAST assigns MINs to non-GSM subscribers in the world, excluding North America and the Caribbean. Those areas are serviced by the MBI Administration.
U.S. District Judge Catherine Blake-who is familiar to the wireless industry because she has presided over major wireless health-related lawsuits-is overseeing the IFAST litigation.
IFAST has bounced around from one industry association to another over the past decade. According to court documents, the global roaming forum was created in 1996 by then-Bellcore, now Telcordia Technologies, and CTIA, the U.S. cell-phone trade group. IFAST remained with CTIA until the fall of 1999, when the Telecommunications Industry Association took over management of IFAST.
Not long after, IFAST moved to ATIS in July 2000. Then, in late 2004, ATIS said Hall-founding organizer of IFAST and a former employee of CTIA and ATIS-took IFAST private under a new Maryland corporation named TelecomXchange International.
ATIS has asked the court to halt TelecomXchange’s IFAST activities and return control of IFAST to ATIS. Blake has set a preliminary injunction hearing for May 6 in Baltimore.
In addition to Hall and Telecom, other defendants include Hall’s wife Lynsie, Canadian-based Cellular Networking Perspectives Ltd. and Omnilearn L.L.C., a Maryland firm.
Lawyers for IFAST, who are seeking legal standing as an intervenor in the case, told the court IFAST never agreed to be bound by ATIS bylaws and that this was understood by ATIS’ board of directors and management.
IFAST attorneys said that over time ATIS became less of a good fit for a global roaming forum.
“IFAST had grown dissatisfied with ATIS’s secretariat services as ATIS changed its organization structure to become a standards development organization and requested that IFAST follow the new ATIS operating procedures, which would require participants to become dues-paying members of ATIS,” IFAST told the court. “The changes would also have required IFAST to grant ATIS rights to IFAST’s intellectual property.”
Earlier this month, IFAST sued ATIS, accusing the trade group of misappropriating IFAST’s assets and funds and interfering with its business relationships.
Last week, Dan Bart, senior vice president of standards and special projects at TIA, filed a declaration with the court warning of consequences if IFAST is prevented from assigning international roaming numbers. “Non-availability of IRMs, even for a short time, can impact international roaming on many of the systems that are based on ANSI [American National Standards Institute]/TIA standards … A decision to enjoin the assignment of IRMs by IFAST could seriously damage roaming networks using those standards,” said Bart.
Bart said he made court declaration at the request of David Crowe, a defendant in the ATIS suit and an elected chairman of one of TIA’s subcommittees that has responsibility for the development and maintenance of TIA standards. R
