WASHINGTON-East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative located in Northeast Iowa said that as of last Monday it was no longer going to allow wireless calls to connect to its network because it has not received payment for the calls.
“When people use our facilities, we should get paid for it,” said Butch Rorabaugh, general manager of East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative.
The dilemma for EBTC began in 1999 when Qwest Communications International Inc., the regional Bell Operating Company that serves Iowa, stopped paying its entire bill to EBTC because Qwest claimed some of the calls were from wireless carriers and not its responsibility. The Iowa Utilities Board agreed. EBTC was stuck, said Rorabaugh. “We weren’t much in a bargaining position, because we couldn’t identify the calls,” he said.
Recently, EBTC purchased software that allows it to identify each call so it now knows which calls to its customers are from Qwest landline customers and which calls are from U.S. Cellular Corp., Verizon Wireless, Iowa Cellular or MidWest Cellular, the wireless carriers serving its territory. It issued a notice to Qwest to not deliver the traffic and sent letters to the wireless carriers and its customers. “Our demand of Qwest was not to send the unauthorized traffic,” said Rorabaugh.
Late on Friday, Qwest received a two-week injunction from the Iowa Utilities Board.
Rorabaugh believes the wireless carriers pay Qwest to terminate the traffic on EBTC’s network, but that Qwest believes the amount is too low.
“I sincerely believe the wireless carriers are paying Qwest-perhaps, and I am just speculating-they are not paying Qwest enough to pay our end of the termination,” said Rorabaugh.
Qwest seemed to confirm this by saying that it only receives a small amount from wireless carriers, but the real issue is that EBTC is not entitled to receive anything because these are local calls within Iowa.
There is a small fee to connect calls to EBTC’s network,” said Nancy DeVinany-McNeley, Qwest spokeswoman. “These are not the same calls. That fee is for using Qwest’s network to carry traffic. EBTC wants access charges for calls that are considered local.”
