James Middleton

July 17, 2007

1 Min Read
Truphone scores against T-Mobile

The mobile VoIP community drew first blood against the incumbent carriers this week, when a UK court forced T-Mobile to interconnect with Truphone.

Last month, the VoIP provider complained that T-Mobile had started blocking connections to Truphone’s new 07978 number range, following a dispute over the interconnect fees T-Mobile would pay to connect a call to a Truphone number.

On Monday, the Royal Court of Justice stepped in with an interim injunction forcing T-Mobile to begin routing calls to Truphone numbers by July 23.

The ruling is understood to be the first time that interim relief has been awarded against a mobile network operator under the Competition Act in the UK.

In a nutshell, T-Mobile argues that even though Truphone has managed to acquire a number range typically reserved for mobile phones, it is not in fact a mobile operator, and should not receive the termination charges normally given to mobile carriers.

On the one hand, this seems reasonable as Truphone terminates calls to it users on a fixed (wifi) network. But on the other hand, if a Truphone user is out of range of a wifi connection, Truphone has to route the call through to the user’s mobile number and must pay to terminate the call on a mobile network.

Arguments over interconnect pricing aside, it seems in this case that the judge has taken issue with T-Mobile’s decision to arbitrarily block access to a range of numbers, which should be accessible to its subscribers.

Dean Bubley over at Disruptive Analysis, commented: “While I certainly appreciate the desire of operators not to subsidise WLAN-capable handsets & then see that subsidy used against them, the notion that they can just arbitrarily block outbound calls to number ranges they don’t like is ridiculous.”

About the Author(s)

James Middleton

James Middleton is managing editor of telecoms.com | Follow him @telecomsjames

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