More ‘Free’ Call-Blocking from AT&T?

FreeConferenceCall.com CEO David Erickson said you can add his company to the list of free-calling concerns whose access numbers are being selectively blocked by Cingular, now part of the wireless arm of AT&T.

(UPDATE: AT&T confirmed Thursday it is blocking FreeConferenceCall.com.)While we haven’t yet verified Erickson’s claims with AT&T An AT&T spokesman said Thursday that the company is targeting FreeConferenceCall.com since its services (as well as its name) are similar to FreeConference.com, whose numbers AT&T confirmed it was blocking last week, in our first post on the subject.

Whether or not AT&T has legal right to do so — and whether or not its actions are an example of why network neutrality laws may be needed to police large service providers — were hot topics of conversation at the Spring 2007 VON show this week in San Jose, Calif.

Erickson, who we talked to Wednesday at VON, said his company started receiving complaints from Cingular/AT&T customers whose calls in to the conferencing service were blocked on March 9, the same day FreeConference.com reported call-blocking. Erickson, who would not provide more details on how extensive the call-blocking might be, said he has not had any conversations with Cingular/AT&T about the matter.

Erickson’s firm was also one of the companies named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by Qwest against Iowa-based calling operations, which typically make use of higher-than-average rural telco access fees to gain some of their profits. Unlike some of those firms, FreeConferenceCall.com was not forced to shut down either because of the lawsuits or the call-blocking, Erickson said.

While Erickson hasn’t yet decided when or how to take any potential legal steps against AT&T, several interested and informed observers at VON predicted the ball will soon land in the FCC’s court, since the commission would appear to have jurisdiction over any potential blocking of calls (like it asserted in the now-famous Vonage vs. Madison River case).

Jonathan Canis, an attorney whose firm is representing Iowa LECs and some free-calling concerns in their cases against AT&T and Qwest, said Tuesday that there have been “informal calls” to the FCC about the matter, as well as to the Iowa public utility commission. However, since Canis noted that such bodies “don’t move so quickly,” the groups may also seek some kind of legal injunction against such call-blocking so that the businesses of the free-calling concerns aren’t unduly harmed.

loading

Comments have been disabled for this post