T-Mobile Urges Court to Deny Plaintiffs' Request for Call Data in LRBT Case

A request to supplement a renewed motion to compel with related interrogatories “did not need to be made” and should be denied, said defendants T-Mobile and Inteliquent in a Dec. 21 response (docket 1:19-cv-07190) to Craigville Telephone and Consolidated Telephone’s Dec. 12 motion filed in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago.

The plaintiffs’ renewed motion to compel in the class action seeks information about how T-Mobile determined estimates of the number of calls into which it's alleged to have inserted fake local ring back tones (LRBT) instead of connecting calls to rural areas in the country that have expensive routing fees. The fake tone would make the caller think the recipient didn’t answer, when the call wasn’t actually delivered, the plaintiffs said.

Plaintiffs cited the FCC’s 2013 Rural Call Completion Order, noting some carriers engage in “blocking or degrading traffic” to rural America to “minimize their intercarrier compensation payments.” In 2018, T-Mobile agreed to pay $40 million to resolve an FCC investigation into whether it used false ringing sounds, but the settlement didn’t compensate affected customers, said the complaint.

In its response to plaintiffs’ motion to supplement their renewed motion to compel, T-Mobile noted interrogatories at issue involve requests for production (RFPs) of all documents on (1) the actual or estimated number of calls affected by the LRBT parameter and (2) production of all documents “and/or data” used by T-Mobile to prepare any estimate of calls affected by the LRBT parameter. The court found the general subject of the RFPs relevant, but it denied plaintiffs’ motion to compel responses, ruling that they were vague, “facially overbroad” and “disproportionate to the needs of the case,” T-Mobile noted.

The parties discussed ways in which the RFPs might be narrowed, said T-Mobile’s response. The plaintiffs asked T-Mobile to produce documents showing its methodology and data used in the estimates, but T-Mobile said the material sought was “intertwined with attorney work product,” and it was concerned the plaintiffs would try to “seek to invade privilege and work product further by claiming a subject-matter waiver.” The plaintiffs refused to agree that disclosure of the information wouldn't constitute a subject-matter waiver or that they wouldn't challenge T-Mobile’s privilege claims for the documents responsive to the cited RFPs.

Plaintiffs have information about the estimate of calls provided to the FCC and on which type of calls the LRBT was implemented, T-Mobile said, but they want more, including the cell towers from which the data was collected, dates of call records and type of signaling in call detail records. “Plaintiffs do not seek underlying facts about [its] business, but rather to understand counsel’s and its consultant’s and client’s thought processes when responding to an FCC investigation,” it said.

The class action was filed in November 2019, about three months before U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero for Southern New York wrote the decision clearing T-Mobile's Sprint buy. The complaint alleges the defendants violated sections 201 and 202 of the Communications Act and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. It alleges T-Mobile interfered with Illinois contract law and that all defendants engaged in civil conspiracy and violated the state’s Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practice Act.