AT&T and Sprint are moving their spat over interconnection agreements from state courts to the FCC. Sprint wants to expand a no-fee deal it had with AT&T to apply in 22 states, but AT&T wants to stop that from happening and keep the millions in annual revenue that it would lose. Since 2001 two Sprint Nextel affiliates that operate in nine states have had "bill and keep" arrangements with AT&T. "Bill and keep" refers to agreements whereby carriers don't bill each other for traffic on their respective networks. Sprint decided last year to try to expand these agreements to AT&T's entire footprint by using a government condition that AT&T accepted as part of its BellSouth acquisition in 2006.
For more on the carriers' spat:
- read this article from the AP