A summary judgment victory rendered by the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Missouri, Eastern Division (St. Louis) granted partial summary judgment as to liability in favor of Kelley Drye client Global Crossing Telecommunications Inc. against SBC Communications (Southwestern Bell).

The issue was the proper access pricing to be paid by Global Crossing to SBC for the termination of wireless calls, whether interstate or intrastate. In an attempt to justify its practice of charging Global Crossing higher intrastate rates for calls that were truly interstate in nature, SBC argued that the area codes assigned to mobile phones should be used to determine the geographic location of the originator in order to classify a call as interstate or intrastate, while Kelley Drye argued for Global Crossing that jurisdiction must be based on geographical location, and that mobile phone numbers are geographically meaningless. The Global Crossing position was that, due to the increasingly transient use of mobile phones, all mobile calls are “unknown” as to jurisdiction and should fall under the provision of SBC’s Interstate Tariff on file with the FCC that applies to such calls. The court agreed and stated that the termination fee charged by SBC to Global Crossing should be calculated under the unknown jurisdiction provision.

Summary Judgment Achieved on Behalf of Global Crossing