FCC Action May Be Sought as AT&T, Sprint Fight over Interconnection Rules
Sprint Nextel has entered a new phase in its fight with AT&T over whether the Bell is living up to a promise to extend interconnection agreements made in last year’s AT&T- BellSouth merger agreement. After battling AT&T in the old BellSouth states, Sprint is making filings in legacy SBC states. Sprint may file a complaint to the FCC, we're told.
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Sprint has made extension of interconnection agreements with AT&T under which Sprint callers connect to callers on the Bell’s network. But subsidiaries haven’t. The contract covers rates and other terms, including on operational matters.
“The ability to extend an interconnection agreement under the merger commitment relieves a carrier from the burden of having to commit resources to the negotiation effort,” said a company source. “It’s as simple as that. It allows you to do something quicker and less costly than if you had to engage in drawn out negotiations and arbitration.”
Sprint had success in Kentucky and North Carolina. In Kentucky, AT&T said its interconnection agreement with Sprint expired at the end of 2004, with only a three-year extension from then possible. The Kentucky commission ruled that using this date would be “wholly inconsistent with the FCC merger commitment” and would “create an unreasonable result.” The commission said the three years began Dec. 29, 2006, the date the merger order took effect.
The North Carolina commission this week approved an agreement between Sprint and AT&T extending interconnection three years from Match 20, the date that Sprint proposed. The Mississippi commission, on the other hand, found it lacked jurisdiction over Sprint’s protection for itself and its affiliates in separate filings. “The Commission finds that the FCC has exclusive jurisdiction over the enforcement of the FCC merger commitments contained in the FCC’s merger order as related to the facts of these two cases,” the Mississippi commission said in an order.
Sprint asked a federal court in Jackson, Miss., to order the state commission to act. Refusing to act violates federal law and state rules, Sprint alleged. The carrier can seek FCC review in states where it lost. Sprint officials declined to comment on whether it will.
An AT&T spokesman said Thursday that Sprint’s complaints lack validity, since the carrier has written to interconnected carriers offering to extend agreements. The letters say an agreement “may be extended for up to three years from the date of a carrier’s extension request” if filed by Jan. 15, 2008. A Sprint spokeswoman said that Sprint-AT&T issues largely are resolved, but AT&T hasn’t recognized agreements for Nextel and Nextel Partners in the nine BellSouth states, Missouri, and Ohio.