Let’s Talk: New T-Mobile Asks For Merger Condition Modifications

摘要

Fewer than three months after T-Mobile and Sprint completed their $26.5bln merger, the combined company is asking the California Public Utilities Commission in a petition to modify conditions the agency placed on the joining. NewT-Mobile already has a tricky relationship with the CPUC. After agreeing to conditions imposed by the DOJ and the FCC, T-Mobile and Sprint completed their merger on April 1 without waiting for the CPUC's approval. The newly-combined company claimed that CPUC had no jurisdiction over transactions in the wireless industry. CPUC disagreed, and imposed additional conditions when it eventually approved the merger on April 16. T-Mobile's first ask is that the CPUC give the company an additional two years to meet 5G buildout requirements within the state. The existing condition to the merger asks that T-Mobile offer average speeds of 300Mbps to 93% of Californians by the end of 2024.T-Mobile argued that it should have until the end of 2026 to complete the buildout because of delays in wants to nix a CPUC mandate requiring that the company increase its net full-time jobs in California by a thousand jobs more than the number of full-time jobs present across Sprint, Assurance Wireless and T-Mobile at the time of the merger. "The Commission simply does not have the authority to require a wireless carrier to hire a particular number of employees in a given time period," T-Mobile said in the petition. "The legislature has never granted it such authority and, prior to the issuance of the Decision the Commission has not attempted to impose such a mandate on any other communications provider in any context." T-Mobile continued by saying even if it was permissible for the Commission to impose the hiring condition, that condition should be adjusted because of the consequences the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the economy and businesses. Prior to the closing of the merger, T-Mobile and Sprint had voluntarily committed to ensuring there would be at least the same number of T-Mobile employees in the state three years after the transaction's closing as there were on the date the deal closed. Finally, the combined company is looking to get out of a CPUC testing requirement, imploring the Commission to rely on FCC testing to ensure it is meeting network expansion requirements. Under its current plan, the CPUC would perform its own drive testing to verify compliance with those conditions. "T-Mobile's 5G network build and resulting speeds and coverage are already subject to two different tests conducted or overseen by independent third parties, both of which were part of the record during the proceedings," T-Mobile said.