By: Ben Mook

A recently released study on the practice of “traffic pumping” — directing cell phone calls to rural landline carriers to generate higher long distance fees — estimates the practice will cost wireless companies upwards of $170 million this year.

The March study by Connective Solutions in Bethesda is a follow up to the first study the firm did in July 2010 that looked at  the impact of traffic pumping. The study found that 10 percent of calls meeting the traffic pumping profile originated from Maryland, second only to New York City, which accounted for 17 percent.

Traffic pumping takes advantage of a provision of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that lets rural carriers charge more to handle incoming calls since they have less traffic on the lines and higher infrastructure costs.

In a typical traffic pumping scenario, a cell phone owner in an urban area like D.C. or New York will call a number registered to a carrier in a rural area – in 59 percent of the case it’s an Iowa number. Callers are encouraged to call because the number offers free services like conference calling, online radio or even adult chats — services inherently meant to keep people on the phone for a long time.

Wireless companies like AT&T and Verizon obviously have a problem with this since they get stuck with the bill, paying not only for more minutes but a higher fee for the minutes. The situation is exacerbated by the ubiquity of unlimited minutes.

Given that $170 million in extra costs is at stake, wireless companies have been trying to find ways to stop or curtail traffic pumping. Metro PCS, a Dallas-based, no-contract wireless carrier that offers a fixed-price plan that includes unlimited voice minutes, has an ongoing lawsuit in Maryland over the practice. Metro PCS is suing Salisbury-based Community Voice Line LLC,  a telecommunications company that specializes in free conference calls.

CVL and MetroPCS are at odds over services CVL offers to customers who make calls to Iowa-based phone numbers it owns. CVL claims MetroPCS is unlawfully blocking the calls and filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for Northern Iowa on Feb. 22 to that effect.

MetroPCS, in turn, filed a motion in that court claiming Iowa is the wrong jurisdiction and responded by filing its own lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Baltimore, seeking a court declaration that it is not blocking numbers. The company said its customers can call the CVL numbers in question, but they are exempt from the unlimited plan. MetroPCS said its customers need to buy additional minutes or a calling card to access them.

The lawsuit is ongoing but the courts declined to impose a temporary restraining order against Metro PCS for its classification of the calls.