In an interesting lawsuit, VoIP-Pal, a patent holding company brought suit against AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Deutsche Telekom for now allow customers an option to use WiFi calling and WiFi texting.

Of course, anybody with a smartphone can make a WiFi call across their phone’s data connection, and the lawsuit is really a complaint that the cellular companies are forcing customers to pay for a traditional voice and texting plan when customers only want to buy a bare broadband connection.

The company has filed multiple suits, including a class-action lawsuit that alleges that the big carriers are squelching a nascent WiFi calling industry. That suit seeks to represent 373 million smartphone customers and is asking for almost $269 billion for customers to be delivered in the form of lower bills.

The argument being made in the current lawsuit is that WiFi calling is technologically independent from cellular voice service and that these giant carriers are presenting WiFi calling as a feature rather than allow it to be a standalone service option. The suit says that treating WiFi as a feature allows cellular companies to save a huge amount of costs by dumping WiFi calls to landline connections.

The final argument is that the big cell companies don’t charge anything for the WiFi feature, making it impossible for others to offer competitive alternatives.

This is an interesting lawsuit for several reasons. First, there is no denying that cellular companies reap huge benefits by dumping voice and data connections across home and business WiFi networks, which makes ISPs carry their traffic for free. Many of you might remember discussions in the industry a decade ago about how ISPs might be able to make money by offering WiFi bypass services to cellular carriers. But that idea died pretty quickly when cellphones came with a WiFi connection and customers began dumping data cellular data across their home broadband connection for free. I used to wonder why ISPs never challenged this free use of their networks. It’s clear why this is okay today when big telcos and cable companies have a cellular product that completely relies on dumping traffic to WiFi connections.

The allegation with the most legs is that cellular carriers are forcing a bundle on customers that includes data, voice, and texting. I assume that the large majority of customers want that bundle so that when they are out of range of WiFi networks they can still complete texts and voice calls. But there are probably a significant number of people who mostly use their phones at home, work, and other places with WiFi connections who would prefer to save money and unbundle the traditional cellular package.

I wonder how many people would buy a data-only cellphone? The idea that the lack of a WiFi calling option disadvantages 373 million people is pretty silly, but there may well be a few million people who would elect a data-only cellphone option – so the concept has some merit even if the claim is exaggerated.

It’s also an interesting question if regulators could mandate a data-only cellphone option. Unlike broadband that is not regulated, the FCC has full regulatory authority over cell service. I can’t imagine the FCC getting involved as the result of this lawsuit, but they might investigate the idea if enough customers were asking for a data-only cellphone. The regulatory trend in the country has been against forced bundles, and most cellphone packages are exactly that.