$7 mil PUC fine
urged for HawTel

VoiceStream says Hawaiian Tel
has ignored an order on rates
for links with the wireless system

By Rob Perez
Star-Bulletin

A wireless phone company has asked the state Public Utilities Commission to fine GTE Hawaiian Tel nearly $7 million for what the company claims is GTE's failure to abide by a PUC order.

Western Wireless Corp., which does business locally as VoiceStream Wireless, alleges that GTE has blatantly disregarded a February order that sets new interconnection rates for when customers of the two companies call each other.

But GTE, Hawaii's local phone provider, says it is abiding by terms of the agreement.

"Once you go beyond the inflammatory language and rhetoric (of Western Wireless' allegations) and look at the interconnection agreement . . . much of what they're alleging is not true," said Joel Matsunaga, GTE's vice president of external affairs.

The commission arbitrated the interconnection agreement after the two sides couldn't come to terms on a contract.

The pre-arbitration rates that Western Wireless continues to pay when one of its customers calls someone on GTE's network are nearly four times the arbitrated rates, the company says.

But GTE has no intention of complying with the arbitrated agreement, according to Western Wireless, which asked the commission to fine GTE $25,000 for each day since Feb. 26 -- the agreement's effective date -- that the utility remains in non-compliance.

"GTE's position represents the monopolist actions of a local exchange carrier unwilling to give up its stranglehold of the local telecommunications market," the company says in its request to the PUC.

Matsunaga, however, said GTE is complying with the agreement even as it challenges the commission's February order in federal court.

The arbitrated contract stipulated that the new rates wouldn't take effect until Western Wireless brought its interconnect system in compliance with the agreement, Matsunaga said.

Western Wireless recently did that, so GTE made the changes to start billing under the new rates, he said. The new rates already were in effect when Western Wireless filed its allegations with the commission last week, Matsunaga said.

In cases involving a possible fine, the PUC typically holds a hearing before making a decision.

If a hearing is held, it likely wouldn't be until January, a PUC spokesman said.