A federal appeals court ruled that competitive carriers claiming ...
A federal appeals court ruled that competitive carriers claiming an incumbent telco negotiated interconnection in bad faith can’t go to the federal courts until they give state regulators a chance to decide. The 9th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court in…
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San Francisco upheld a district court refusal to review a 2006 Nevada Public Utility Commission dismissal of a complaint by AutoTel Communications against Embarq. The accusation was bad faith negotiation over a new mid-span meeting point to be added to the companies’ interconnection agreement. The PUC dismissed the complaint as unripe, saying AutoTel offered no evidence on which the PUC could act. AutoTel sued the PUC and Embarq in federal court, also filing, ultimately unsuccessfully, a complaint to the FCC. Affirming the lower court, the 9th Circuit (Case 06-16565) said a state commission must decide a bad-faith claim before parties can go to federal court. The appeals tribunal said the PUC hadn’t “impliedly” decided in Embarq’s favor by dismissing AutoTel’s complaint. It said AutoTel made no effort to fix deficiencies noted by the PUC, so it had never actually put the issue of Embarq’s good faith before the commission.