Wisconsin Public Service Commission Latest to Rule Against Halo Wireless
Halo Wireless must “cease and desist” in 30 days in Wisconsin unless it receives necessary certification and “AT&T may take actions to remedy” the violation of an interconnection agreement, the Wisconsin Public Service Commission ruled Friday in an order concluding an investigation of the company’s practices. The Texas-based company still faces many opponents in legal battles across the country regarding its failure to pay access charges. The company’s bankruptcy filing last year won’t save it from the pursuit of state public utility commissions, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in late June.
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"AT&T Wisconsin merely wishes to clarify ... all the relief it seeks and note that this relief is consistent with the relief granted by the Tennessee Regulatory Authority (and now the South Carolina Public Service Commission as well), which the bankruptcy court in Halo’s bankruptcy proceeding found to be fully permitted,” AT&T Wisconsin told that state’s PSC July 3 (http://xrl.us/bnfq63). A Wisconsin Public Service Commission order Friday said Halo breached its interconnection agreement with AT&T, which has loudly spoken against the company in many states.
"Much of the traffic at issue here is not intraMTA wireless traffic, and it is thus subject to terminating access charges,” Wisconsin PSC said (http://xrl.us/bnievd). “The Commission is not determining specifically which providers are owed compensation or the amount of such compensation.” Those details, the commission said, will fall to the bankruptcy courts or other “appropriate forums.”
AT&T Wisconsin expressed satisfaction with the state’s ruling. “We're pleased that the Commission recognized in its ruling that Halo’s actions violated both the law and its interconnection agreement with AT&T,” an AT&T Wisconsin spokeswoman told us. Halo had no comment.
At root concern is the way Halo has conducted business with Transcom Enhanced Services, which receives “high volume service” from Halo, the PSC said. “Transcom is Halo’s only customer and only source of revenues,” the PSC said. “Halo has no consumer customers in Wisconsin and has no paying consumer customers anywhere else.” Halo and Transcom route many calls but never to end users and don’t pay terminating charges for the calls, the commission found. It reiterated the importance of paying access charges. “Whether landline or wireless, calls that originate in one local calling area and terminate in another local calling are subject to access charges,” it said Friday. Halo and Transcom “do not alter the fundamental nature of the traffic by passing it through a 150-foot wireless link,” the commission said.
There’s a broader push among state commissions to scrutinize Halo and Transcom. The Tennessee Regulatory Authority ruled against Halo in January and said telcos were able to “terminate the interconnection agreement,” “stop accepting traffic from Halo Wireless,” and that Halo is liable to access charges for traffic it has sent to AT&T Tennessee so far (http://xrl.us/bnfq9q). The South Carolina Public Service Commission moved to do the same in a June 27 ruling saying Halo “materially breached the interconnection agreement with AT&T by sending landline-originated traffic to AT&T, inserting incorrect Charge Number (CN) information on calls, and failing to pay for facilities that it has ordered pursuant to the interconnection agreement” and excused AT&T from its dealings with Halo (http://xrl.us/bnfrai). The Florida Public Service Commission held a hearing on a case by AT&T against Halo on July 12-13 (http://xrl.us/bnfrgx), the Michigan Public Service Commission dismissed an AT&T case against Halo June 26 after the companies settled (http://xrl.us/bnfrj6) and the California Public Utilities Commission plans to address an AT&T complaint against Halo in Sept. 20 and 21 hearings (http://xrl.us/bnfrm8).
The Wisconsin ruling says Transcom isn’t an enhanced service provider, although Halo defended Transcom’s status as an ESP in its July Florida hearings according to testimony and transcripts released online July 23. “Transcom was declared an ESP in four separate Federal court rulings, some of which were the result of actions brought by AT&T and AT&T is therefore bound by those decisions,” said consulting practice Ameliowave Inc. President Robert Johnson on behalf of Transcom to the Florida PSC (http://xrl.us/bnieps). Transcom “purposefully arranged its operations to meet the test for ESP status,” he said. Transcom says it’s “not subject to paying access charges on the calls that it delivers to Halo,” according to the Wisconsin PSC, which criticized the overall nature of Halo and Transcom’s court arguments and questioned their truth. “If the calls at issue here were originated by Transcom at the Halo tower sites, if the calls were in fact all wireless calls originated in the same MTA in which they were terminated, and if the calls were enhanced by Transcom,” as Halo contends, then the companies would be fine, the commission said, but argued that’s not the case. The commission rebutted the idea that Transcom is an ESP, saying there’s “no credible basis to consider that the actions performed on this traffic in the Transcom facilities constitute enhancements that qualify or legitimize Transcom as an ESP” and thus is liable to access charges.