Landline-to-cellphone calls in the same area are local calls, sub...

the U.S. Dist. Court, Kansas City, and the Mo. PSC in a case brought by Alma Communications, a rural LEC arguing the calls were long distance. Complicating the issue was the fact that cellphone provider T-Mobile had no direct connection to Alma’s rural network, instead interconnecting via Southwestern Bell. When there’s direct interconnection, there’s no question the calls are local and costs are handled by a reciprocal compensation agreement between the LEC and the wireless company, said Chief Judge John Gibson, who wrote the opinion. It’s also clear who pays when calls travel from the cellphone to the landline, he said: “The dispute in this case concerns calls going in the other direction, from a landline to a cell phone.” Gibson said Alma sends all traffic bound for T-Mobile through a long distance carrier, “even calls to a T-Mobile phone that originate and terminate within Alma’s local service area… Alma insists that it has no choice but to send T-Mobile’s calls through a long- distance carrier and that those calls are therefore inherently long-distance in nature.” Gibson said the court “cannot accept Alma’s argument that intra-major trading area land-line to cell-phone calls are not subject to reciprocal compensation” because it rejected a similar argument in another case involving local dialing parity. “We are bound by circuit precedent to hold that calls from a land line to a cell phone placed and received within the same major trading area are local calls, subject to reciprocal compensation arrangements” under the Telecom Act, Gibson wrote.