A U.S. District Court judge in Chicago rejected...

A U.S. District Court judge in Chicago rejected claims that the four national wireless carriers, aided by CTIA, conspired to fix the price of pay-per-use (PPU) text messages -- the rate subscribers without a bundled plan pay for individual texts. Judge Matthew Kennelly tossed out a class-action lawsuit brought against AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon. “Plaintiffs allege a conspiracy in which T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon agreed to coordinate their PPU … pricing -- first at ten cents, then at fifteen, and finally at twenty -- from 2005 to 2008,” Kennelly wrote. “Plaintiffs allege that high-level officers of the carriers devised the increases in concert, using CTIA meetings as a venue for their discussions, and concocted sham internal analyses to justify the pricing moves. Plaintiffs also present economic evidence to the effect that the structure of the wireless industry, and the carriers’ position in it, provided an incentive for the carriers to collude.” After reviewing the evidence, Kennelly rejected the arguments and granted the carriers summary judgment.