Faced with higher costs and lower revenues, the Hamilton County (Tenn.) Emergency Communications District has filed a lawsuit against AT&T to protect its 911 revenue stream, alleging the company has knowingly underpaid state-required 911 fees. The amount of underpayments isn’t know, the district says in its federal lawsuit, because AT&T has filed inaccurate reports on the number of telephone lines that it operates, particularly for business customers. The district is asking for an injunction to compel AT&T to provide the telephone line information, unpaid 911 fees dating back to 2001, accumulated interest, punitive damages of $10,000 for each false AT&T statement, and court costs. Some of the district’s lawsuit hinges on new digital technology that allows several telephone calls to be carried on a single circuit. Previous analog technology allowed just a single telephone call for each circuit. For several years, the district claims, AT&T has been reporting only the number of circuits it carries, rather than the number of telephone lines, thereby vastly under-paying 911 fees. According to the lawsuit, AT&T has also under-bid competitors on business-related telephone systems and won contracts by collecting just $2 per line of the 911 surcharge, rather than the state-required $3 per line. That under-collection allows AT&T to “unlawfully increase its profits at the expense of revenue to support the critical emergency services provided by the District.” Read more about the lawsuit here, and download (pdf) the full lawsuit here.
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So there is an interesting irony in how this was discovered: “In a March phone service bid proposal for Hamilton County, AT&T stated it would not collect the $3 rate and instead collect $2 per line per month.”
So is AT&T still awarded the county contract – knowingly having violated the law during the RFP process? (They won the bid by .69 cents – possibly by committing a violation.)
In our state, a company that has a conviction such as this can’t do business with the state. (And I realize this case is open for trial).
Yet in an earlier same time period, the state of Tennessee (thru pressure from the Governor’s office) awarded the statewide 9-1-1 services contract to AT&T.
Makes you wonder more than just a little about the ethics of the state…
I think AT&T is going to need to get a bigger broom to sweep this problem under the rug. “Hey Randy, we’all are gonna’ need you to cut us a check…”
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