it please the court my name is phil shank and were going to represent appellant in this case which are sprint wireless operating entities within the state of illinois this case arises out of the end interconnection arbitration proceeding it was conducted by the only commerce commission under the procedures in the one nine hundred ninety six telecommunications act in that case the illinois commission resolved issues in established terms of a contract and interconnection agreement that would govern or the way in which sprints wireless entities and eighteen t s landline telephone company connect their telecommunications networks and then exchange calls on appeal here sprint asks this court to reverse the commission and the district court on three legal issues you know but you know there's something this is a very arid quality to the to the briefs in this case there's absolutely nothing in the briefs about the stakes about prices about economic conditions whether there's a natural monopoly problem so for example you want to do when you have a sprint caller and the person on the other end is not an a customer but eighteen keys facilities are used for part of the transmission you want to have this very low price that you have is that when the recipient of the could you have alternatives can you build your own facilities around transmission facilities to reach those customers is there anything in the record about these the you are  position what is undisputed is that you have sprint is intitled to if sprint is using these particular links these links between the eighteen to switch and sprints which for  interconnection for purposes all allowed under section two fifty one see to then it gets the lower rates set by the commission under the cost methodology just for the purpose of interconnection yes the holding of talk commissions to provide competitors like sprint with interconnection to facilitate the transmission and routing of the question is the meaning of interconnection and it would help me anyway to have some sense of what the what the stakes are and part of the reason your honor that that's not in the record is this case didn't involve pricing of those facilities the parties came in in agreed that the prices previously set by the commission under that cost methodology the f c c has total element long run incremental cost methodology wouldn't be changed they would be as they were set in the prior cost docket so there wasn't there weren't cost experts there wasn't testimony on that but there is a difference in those costs between i'm sure if it's one percent difference i don't understand if it were one percent difference the parties wouldn't be here illegally so what is the difference i don't know your honor so how do you know it's not one percent because the parties are fighting in multiple states about whether but i don't know why the parties are fighting right it could be in a lot of reasons for parties to be fighting apart from the economic st the parties have to have decided amongst themselves that the difference in these rates is significant enough to make it an arbitration issue here in illinois and in other states i apologize for not knowing what those right levels are do you know anything about the economic circumstances and consequences of this of the issues you raise from a dollars and cents to that standpoint i don't and it's not in the record what i so by doing that by or by doing that you have you you are charging last year concession to your customers at the same time you are hoping by doing this that you get a your honor the the rates to be paid under eighteen ts access tariff are i believe they're in i think they're incorporated into an attachment to our complaint where there are per minute rates that were copied over from the tariffs to the into the interconnection agreement it's in the order of a penny a minute or some portion of a penny a minute compared to zero per minute because under the f c c these rules if it's not an access charge what you're going to pay for two eighteen right if the commission route you of treating all y r i'm sorry you're going to be charging less to your customers by treating all your calls as local calls and then correct it's not your i don't know what gets charged customers is determined by the marketplace springle will pay less to a t and t experience position is accepted but what's important i understand you want to pay less than eighteen but i thought you're also charging less to your customers because you're treating all your calls as local rather than a long distance where the market bears what the market bears and what the f c c did many years ago in the ninety's was say that it was going to let carriers and their customers decide what customers wanted within their service plans and and let the market set rates and that's what's happened customers want to buy plans that have unlimited local calling throughout a nationwide calling area so that's that's what drives the calling area and then the rates are determined by the market that's a different question from whether a t n t is allowed under the f c c as new pricing rules established in two thousand and eleven to assess charges on any particular kind of call that's an f c c rule question not an economics question not a question about whether sprint is going to do better or worse or how much better that's a question of interpretation and application of an f c c rule in light of the statutory terms that existed when the f c c adopted that rule and the eighteenth tee and the commission  concede that if you apply those so those use those words read those words in conjunction with the statute that exchange access which is that is the clause the c used in its new rules ties back to the term telephone exchange service which requires a separate charge that means that calls without a separate charge aren't within the scope of that rules rule and the new rule does not impose compensation obligations on sprint for delivering that trend that call what you mean by separate charge a separate charge most of us in the room remember we're talking about a call in and issue three for example from st louis to chicago a sprint wireless customer makes a call t landline telephone customer that's the kind of call we're talking about most of us in the room remember when that kind of call if you were going to call st louis to chicago it was five cents a minute eight cents a minute ten cents a minute you knew you were going to pay a separate charge for every minute you were on the phone that's what a separate charges that's what makes a call a kilo phone toll service call under the statu and we just don't have that in the wireless industry today as i said before and as was undisputed i why does that change the meaning of stature there are i suppose to waves to read the statu is that it would refer to things that were telephone toll calls in one nine hundred ninety six and the other is that it refers to things that are telephone toll calls no use there you obviously favor the latter reading but watch as the f c c adopted regulations saying the latter reading is the only admissible one the the definition has not changed we just know that there is no definition in the statute i'm asking a temporal question the statute might mean the market as it's structured as it was structured in ninety six where the market as it's structured as at the time of the dispute right in the statute doesn't tell you which of these two things is right has the c adopted regulations say which of these two things is right what the f c c has done your honor is to indicate in its orders that it understands that telephone toll service is provided by wireless carriers when and calls are delivered outside of the home calling area which is our position so your answer to my question is no if asked adopted any such regulation united has it has not again i would submit that the definition of telephone toll service in the statute is sufficient to accomplish that there is no definition in the statute telephone toll service about my question about what the temporal framework  just like any other competing telephone company wants to indirectly interconnect with all of the other carriers in the area the dozens and dozens and dozens of carriers within the chicago area and to do so at some calls indispensable is the wrong word to be at parity with a t n t no no that's not my question do you always have to use it the other some calls for which you have no alternative to using eighteen to these recalls to people who are not customers sprint could always choose to connect to long distance carriers directly rather than indirectly that will be more expensive and will put sprint why would it be more expensive  because you're connecting you're establishing maybe twenty separate direct connections instead of one hub in spoken action the spoke to eighteen t and that led eighteen to distribute briefly addressing the first question that the court and its mr shanklin bird i too have to admit that i do not know the precise price differentials at stake here because those are not in the record but there are differences and that is why the parties are fighting these issues with respect to i have a question a related question about why you are fighting which is since under talk america th my claim doesn't believe that sprint's position would maximize traffic and revenue in particular currently i should say currently under the parties prior interconnection agreeing that sprint had the option to in some cases did purchase the same facilities a tariff rates in the tariff rates are significantly higher than that tell her i don't know exactly what the difference is but teller crates are the supreme court describe them as  circumstances it's safe to say that tariff rates are somewhat higher and that is that includes the case in the last issue on appeal here relating to access charges for interest in th traffic sprint's position is that per minute but when you're talking about a company the size of spread there will be millions of calls and millions of minutes so those numbers do add up and similarly on the on the today sprint purchases some facilities from eight hundred tariff and paste error rates and what sprint wants now is to buy those facilities at teller rates which are significantly lower and addressed and one other point that was raised the f c c has not adopted any regulation that specifies a temporal framework for determining whether traffic is tool or whether traffic is exchange six means in trot m t a traffic or inter m t a traffic and since ninety six there had been great changes including the wireless industry including more carriers going to flat rated plans that are maybe nationwide and the f c c in light of all that has never come back and and changed its intra anti a rule where these salit the present rules obsolete i don't think the present rules are obsolete i think the f c c and its in its most recent compensation order in two thousand and eleven the connect america order the f c c adopted new rules capping in reducing excess charges over time so those access charges will go away but in the meantime for that transitional period the f c c said we are going to retain our  meaning we are retaining the distinction the bright line distinction between intra m t a traffic and inter and ga traffic is there something that runs in user there is some concern you abut an end user versus something external i do not understand it yes that's the end user relates to the entrance facility issue and the supreme court relying on the f c c amicus briefs that entrance facilities are available at low teller rates when used for purposes of inner connection and courts have described the purpose of describing her connection as mutual well has defined it as a mutual exchange of traffic and the courts have explained that the purpose of interconnection is so that the competitor and the incumbents and users can call one another and communicate with one another regarding entrance this is what is the logic of the distinction that the logic of the distinction is that you know the fundamental purpose of of interconnection is so that well a competitor cannot interconnect with the incumbent so their customers can make calls to the incumbents come up customers and vice versa it would be extremely difficult for other companies to compete with the come with the incumbent because nobody wants to sign a you know as you say a tariff rate which it would have to be just unreasonable they would put you to do really to jumpstart competition in the act certain things have to be provided to competitors at cost based rates which the f c c enact a regulation saying that means tell rick which is it is it a big gift to special well yeah in our view that's that's one way of looking at it i mean it is most efficient technology and it really does does not take into account actual costs and historical cost so it is it's really is as low as it gets and i think the supreme court is right it's near confis and that me makes sense when you want to jumpstart competition and a competitor needs to interconnect with the incumbent to exchange telephone calls but that's not the case when you're talking about a third party a third party interchange carrier  you know we're guarding the entrance  you know express position is that well basically their position is anything we want to send eighteen thousand through their switch to use our network for his inner connection and i just like to point out i think that's totally inconsistent with what this sprint communicate directly with its own customers without going through an eighteen that is a that is a clear case of bad calling for which our position is and it is the  or congress commission help you cannot use teller price and an extraordinary use of the word back with a bad call usually means you know you send a truck full of stuff you simply and you'd like ideally to you know utilize the truck to bring something back so it's used for both legs of the journey that calling in telecommunications appears to have nothing to do with that stand where the word comes from i i would agree with that i think it is a somewhat strange use of the term and i cannot tell you where it comes from sprint and its brief uses the word intermediary service and i think that is perhaps a fair way to characterize it because the distinction is they want to use eighteen t s network solely as an intermediary to get traffic from sprint to some third party and that's you know in a sense back call because they're guess but i point out in the box case the court did acknowledge the distinction between back calling and interconnection and i think the court of knowledge there that it's a somewhat strange use of the term but you know the f c c has used it  the talk america case and you know the supreme court deferred to the f c c these interpretation of how its rules apply to entrance facilities in that context it in you know on that distinction and reiterated that entrance facilities at least under two fifty one c two which means that teller prices can be used only for interconnection and that's entirely consistent with the box case where  distinguished between battling an inner connection and said she likes under the commerce commission's order that was firm in that case can use entrance facilities exclusively for interconnection so limitation is that sprint cannot use facilities at those rates at teller rates when it wants to deliver traffic to a third party i accept and that example is really no different than the example  acronyms that only specialist use yes you'll have an easier time talking to us generalists yes or yes or interact competitive local exchange carriers those are local exchange carriers other than the a comet competing with the incumbent carrier that that itself is specialized jargon because everybody eighteen t sprint they're all incumbents and have been for a generation right what you're referring to when you refer to incumbent very briefly if you would from the economic standpoint in a competitive standpoint if you were in competition with a t n t and eighty has a switch and eighteen teams already connected to the fifty or seventy five facilities as a matter of federal law have to be provided under section two fifty one so that's very murky right it's very unclear so i think you know you'd to want to show that there is a reason for interpret in the statute the way you want to interpret it the reason being that these rates are not excessive that eighteen and she charges