Cite as: 524 U. S. 214 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
selected.' " Brief for Petitioner 14. Respondent accepted these terms in writing on October 30, 1989.
By February 1990, it had become apparent that the demand for SDN exceeded petitioner's expectations—largely because of the switchless resellers attracted to the service. Petitioner could not fill the volumes of switched-access orders as rapidly as dedicated access orders, or as quickly as petitioner's personnel had predicted. Accordingly, Ms. Kisor notified respondent that it would take up to 90 days to add new locations after the initial SDN was established. She suggested placing respondent's customers with another AT&T service, the Multilocation Calling Plan (MLCP), until they could be placed on SDN. Respondent agreed to this, and ordered MLCP. Again, respondent signed a letter confirming that MLCP " 'is provided under the terms and conditions stated in AT&T's Tariff F. C. C. Nos. 1 and 2.' " Brief for Appellant in Nos. 94-36116, 94-36156 (CA9), p. 15.
Ms. Kisor informed respondent that its initial SDN network was functioning in April 1990. At that point, respondent elected to increase to a larger SDN volume commitment in order to qualify for a larger discount. In placing this order, respondent signed a form stating that the SDN service " 'WILL BE GOVERNED BY THE RATES AND TERMS AND CONDITIONS IN THE APPROPRIATE AT&T TARIFFS.' " Brief for Petitioner 14-15. Respondent then began reselling SDN to its own customers and placing orders with petitioner that required petitioner to treat respondent's customers as if they were new locations on a corporate SDN.
Almost from the outset, respondent experienced problems with the network, including delays in provisioning (the filling of orders) and in billing. An additional billing problem was especially damaging to respondent: respondent's customers received bills reflecting 100% of the discount instead of the 50% respondent selected. These problems continued, and in October 1990, they led respondent to switch to network bill-
219
Page: Index Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007