Judge Grants AT&T Summary Judgment in Access Service Charges Dispute vs. Core

Core Communications can’t collect the millions in unpaid switched access service charges it seeks from AT&T, because Core’s tariffs didn’t authorize it to bill for those services in the first place (see 2212280001), making AT&T entitled to summary judgment on all of Core’s claims, said a signed memorandum Friday (docket 2:21-cv-02771) from U.S. District Judge Joshua Wolson for Eastern Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He denied as moot Core’s motion for summary judgment against AT&T. In a game of telephone, “the problems don’t come from the people at either end of the call, but from “the jumble in the middle,” said Wolson’s memorandum. “This case is about a game of telephone in real life, if you had to pay everyone along the chain,” it said. Core and its affiliates in Delaware, New Jersey, Virginia and West Virginia have had tariffs in place since 2011 to provide switched access services. Core bills AT&T for those services, but AT&T stopped paying Core in 2018, contending nearly all Core’s call traffic was spoofed or fraudulent. Core can’t collect the originating access charges it seeks from AT&T because Core didn’t provide switched access services under its tariff when it routed those calls to AT&T, said the memorandum. All the charges Core seeks AT&T payment on “stem from the origination of 8YY calls,” and there’s no dispute that the 8YY traffic was toll-free, meaning the callers didn’t pay a fee to make the calls, it said. Core acknowledged it charged AT&T for the 8YY traffic it routed to AT&T between July 2017 and June 2021, and no upstream providers paid any fees for the service, it said. This means none of the 8YY callers, nor any of the originating providers, “can be a Company End User” because they didn’t pay Core a fee to use its local exchange or other telecommunications services, said the memorandum. In fact, Core paid the originating providers to acquire the 8YY traffic, it said. In addition, AT&T’s customers who received these calls didn’t pay a fee to Core, it said. Instead, they paid AT&T for toll-free service.