T-Mobile May Pay $5.3M to CPUC for Migration Statements
T-Mobile misled the California Public Utilities Commission with false statements about its CDMA shutdown and should pay nearly $5.3 million for violating the commission rule 1.1, ruled CPUC Administrative Law Judges Karl Bemesderfer and Robert Mason Monday. The decision in…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
docket A.18-07-011 will become final in about a month if no party appeals and no commissioner requests review. While penalizing T-Mobile for statements made to the commission, the CPUC rejected a Dish petition last month to modify the state commission’s April 2020 T-Mobile/Sprint OK (see 2203170072). T-Mobile "falsely represented that there would be a three-year customer migration period (2020-2023)" for Sprint customers to T-Mobile and Boost Mobile customers to Dish Network, the ALJs wrote. Saying that offense was serious, the ALJs said they scaled back the penalty in consideration of recent T-Mobile/Dish talks to resolve their dispute. The CPUC relied on various T-Mobile representations about "a three-year migration period, which were made on the record and under oath,” when it included that migration timeline in its order approving the deal, the ALJs said. "At no time prior to announcing that it planned to end the migration period" Dec. 31 "did T-Mobile alert the Commission and DISH that the various representations quoted above had been misinterpreted." They said it was "telling that, except for T-Mobile, the Commission and all other parties to the proceeding came away from” a Dec. 5, 2019, hearing “with the understanding that the migration period would be three years.” The ALJs rejected “T-Mobile’s attempt to whitewash” Chief Technology Officer Neville Ray’s testimony at a September 2021 hearing (see 2109210040 and 2109200065), saying “T-Mobile’s efforts to deny these promises and its expressed intent to shut down its CDMA network prior to the completion of the three-year migration period have misled the Commission.” T-Mobile suggested it was “nothing more than a misunderstanding that does not rise to the level of a Rule 1.1 violation,” but that argument is “factually and legally incorrect," since T-Mobile never tried to correct the record, they said. T-Mobile didn’t comment Tuesday. In a separate matter, the carrier disagreed Monday with the CPUC seeking up to $230 million in possible fines for subsidiary MetroPCS failing to remit California USF payments for prepaid phone service (see 2204250049).