T-Mobile, Sprint Delay Merging California Operations; PAO Protests Sprint Letter
T-Mobile and Sprint will wait to combine California operations until the California Public Utilities Commission finalizes a proposed OK at its April 16 meeting, company officials told the agency. CEO Mike Sievert and other T-Mobile officials teleconferenced Thursday with Commissioner…
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Cliff Rechtschaffen, who's assigned to the deal review, T-Mobile said in a Wednesday filing in docket A.18-07-011. Last Thursday and Friday, Sprint and T-Mobile officials not including Sievert called aides to Commissioners Liane Randolph, Martha Guzman Aceves and Genevieve Shiroma. The carriers said "just a few key conditions needed to change," including ones on back-up power, CalSpeed testing, extending buildout requirements to 2030, maintaining the LTE network through decommissioning and in-home broadband. The carriers are committed to state LifeLine and Boost Mobile low-income pilot. The deal will support broadband that the COVID-19 pandemic showed is critically important, the California Emerging Technology Fund told aides to Randolph in a Tuesday call, CETF disclosed Wednesday. California public advocates protested Sprint's trying to give up its wireline certificate by advice letter, one of two legal moves that laid the foundation for T-Mobile to close its Sprint buy without CPUC approval (see 2004010069). Sprint must file a formal application; and the requested relief is “unjust, unreasonable, and/or discriminatory,” the CPUC Public Advocates Office wrote. The acquiree didn't address the status of its California customers “and how the technology transition was noticed, the fact that Sprint’s legal interpretation ignores the current status of state law regarding VoIP service,” and implications for T-Mobile/Sprint. Sprint didn't comment now.