AT&T is fighting a recent punishment handed down by the Federal Communications Commission. Last month, the FCC issued a Notice of Apparent Liability (NAL) that says AT&T overcharged the Florida school districts of Orange and Dixie by nearly 400 percent.

AT&T filed its response today, saying that there is "no legal or factual basis for liability against AT&T."

The phone service in question is paid for by US citizens through surcharges on phone bills. Those surcharges fund the E-rate program that subsidizes telecommunications for schools and libraries. Under this program, the FCC says AT&T is required to charge schools and libraries the lowest available rates. The commission says AT&T should repay $63,760 it improperly received from the FCC in subsidies and pay an additional fine of $106,425.

AT&T argues that it wasn't actually required to charge the school districts the lowest available price, because the school districts decided to buy service on a month-to-month basis instead of signing one-year contracts.

The FCC Enforcement Bureau "alleges that AT&T should have provided two school districts rates based on one-year contracts despite the fact that the schools were buying services on a month-to-month basis," AT&T wrote in a blog post describing its opposition to the fine. "Contract term is a regular and routine distinction in rates, and the Commission has previously expressed the view that length of contract is a valid basis to price services differently among customers. In this case the school districts at issue never asked for annual contracts, never signed annual contracts, and did not behave as though they had annual contracts."

The school districts also chose not to purchase service through Florida's E-rate consortium, which gets a lower rate by combining the purchasing power of multiple agencies and organizations, AT&T said. Besides that, AT&T says the FCC failed to act before the statute of limitations was up.

"Sadly, we are seeing rulemaking via Enforcement Bureau fiat far too often," AT&T wrote.

The company is also fighting a $100 million fine the FCC proposed after accusing AT&T of throttling the wireless Internet connections of customers with unlimited data plans without adequately notifying the customers about the reduced speeds.

That case illustrates just how long the FCC takes to collect: the FCC proposed the $100 million fine in June 2015, and AT&T filed a dispute the next month. An FCC spokesperson told us today that "the matter is still in process at the FCC." AT&T told us that it is "still awaiting a response" to its rebuttal.

Settlements are common, but if the sides can't agree, the commission can vote to assess a fine with a formal Forfeiture Order. When the process is over, AT&T could appeal a fine to the US Court of Appeals.