A federal court in Ill. told Sprint to provide rural Ill. incumbe...
A federal court in Ill. told Sprint to provide rural Ill. incumbent telcos an unedited copy of its pact with MediaCom Communications to supply wholesale VoIP services. The rural telcos want the material for a suit in U.S. Dist.…
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Court, E. St. Louis, challenging an Ill. Commerce Commission (ICC) order requiring they negotiate local interconnection agreements with Sprint. Sprint isn’t a common carrier or telecom provider as defined by law, the telcos say, claiming the terms of Sprint’s deal with MediaCom will support the charge. Sprint answered earlier requests with a redacted copy of the contract. The telcos said the parts Sprint censored directly relate to their claim that Sprint has no right to interconnection because it doesn’t offer wholesale VoIP services equally to all comers. Sprint and the ICC argued the telcos aren’t entitled to see anything not part of the ICC record when it ordered the telcos to negotiate interconnection with Sprint. The ICC said the telcos in that docket had a chance to demand to see all terms of the Sprint- MediaCom agreement but didn’t ask to. The ICC termed the suit an improper attempt to litigate the ICC ruling based on material not included in the ICC case record. Chief Judge Patrick Murphy in Case 06-CV-00073 ruled that the court has discretion to expand the record, cautioning in allowing the telcos to see the complete MediaCom service contract and question Sprint witnesses on it he isn’t letting the unedited agreement into the court record. He gave Sprint until Nov. 23 to produce the contract and set a Dec. 19 hearing on the rural telcos’ request for an injunction barring the ICC from enforcing its interconnection order.