The 9th U.S. Court of Appeals rejected arguments by competitive c...
The 9th U.S. Court of Appeals rejected arguments by competitive carrier North County Communications that a district judge should have heard out the company’s effort to collect termination charges from wireless carriers. North County alleged that it “began sending…
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monthly bills to the Defendants for traffic termination in January, 2003,” and that it “billed the Defendants $0.004 per minute and $0.007 per call set-up, before increasing its rate to the prevailing market rate of $0.011 per minute,” but the defendants refused to pay or agree to a compensation arrangement. The case turned on jurisdiction. “North County challenges the district court’s dismissal of its declaratory judgment claims for lack of subject matter jurisdiction,” said a decision written by Judge Johnnie Rawlinson (http://xrl.us/bgvaje). “Specifically, the district court held that North County had no private right of action to enforce the compensation arrangements in federal court.” North County maintained in its appeal that it could seek compensation in federal court under the Communications Act and other federal law. “A broad assertion of a private right of action is not easily maintained under the Federal Communications Act, as our statutory analysis is intertwined with the requisite deference to the Commission’s interpretation of the Federal Communications Act,” the court said. “The Commission has not determined that the CMRS providers’ failure to pay compensation violates the Federal Communications Act.” A wireless-industry lawyer said the decision “reaffirms an unsettled Interconnection issue in favor of CMRS carriers.” The FCC has left “unanswered a number of important issues regarding CMRS-CLEC interconnection duties and rates,” the attorney said, noting that the Telecom Act doesn’t deal specifically with this kind of interconnection.