Court case

Judge Victor Marrero of the United States District Court in Manhattan ruled in favor of T-Mobile’s takeover of Sprint in a deal that would further concentrate corporate ownership of technology, combining the nation’s third- and fourth-largest wireless carriers and creating a new telecommunications giant to take on AT&T and Verizon. The decision concluded an unusual suit filed in June by attorneys general from 13 states and the District of Columbia. The challenge was brought after regulators at the Department of Justice and Federal Communications Commission approved the deal.

Just how fast Americans can access 5G wireless service depends, in large part, on how effectively the guts of the network — namely, hundreds of thousands of bulky antennas — are placed in cities.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied a legal challenge from Public Knowledge, The Greenlining Institute and other groups to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s 2017 rollback of certain Obama-era requirements for phone companies angling to transition off of legacy copper networks. “This is a victory for American consumers, who will benefit from faster fiber deployment and the increased availability of next-generation services,” Chairman Pai said. He has touted the deregulation as critical for allowing the transition to more advanced, IP-based networks.

T-Mobile’s attempt to buy Sprint and close the deal faced another setback when US District Judge Timothy Kelly extended his Tunney Act review of the Department of Justice settlement into mid-February. He said he would consider friend-of-the-court briefs on the proposed transaction. The briefs must be limited to 20 pages and filed by January 24, with the parties responding by February 7. “We had initially expected this routine review to end in mid-November.

Almost six months after Facebook agreed to a $5 billion settlement of privacy violations, the issue is anything but settled. The deal with the Federal Trade Commission announced in July to settle allegations that Facebook broke its promises to protect users’ privacy is still under review by a federal judge, who has been weighing objections from opponents who believe the deal is inadequate.

States suing to block T-Mobile's proposed acquisition of Sprint urged the federal judge overseeing the landmark antitrust trial not to defer to the Trump administration’s approval of the $26.5 billion deal. Lawyers for NY and CA, which are leading the lawsuit for the states, said in a filing late Jan 8 that the deal’s approval by the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission doesn’t carry any special weight and should be ignored by the judge.

Department of Justice Antitrust Chief Makan Delrahim is facing congressional scrutiny over his recently revealed texts with DISH Chairman Charlie Ergen, according to a set of questions for the record from House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline (D-RI). I

A fight between the Federal Communications Commission and dozens of cities over the placement of 5G infrastructure will continue to play out in federal court in 2020, with oral arguments scheduled for February. At issue is whether the Federal Communications Commission can restrict how much municipalities can charge wireless carriers like AT&T Inc. to attach pizza box-sized wireless antennas, or small cells, to light poles and other city-owned infrastructure.

In a Dec 20 court filing,  the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission argued that T-Mobile's purchase of Sprint is in the best interest of the US, and any nationwide injunction holding up the merger would block "substantial, long-term, and procompetitive benefits for American consumers." The argument, in large part, boils down to: trust us, we're the experts. "Both the Antitrust Division and the FCC have significant experience and expertise in analyzing these types of transactions and do so from a nationwide perspective," the agencies write.

The future of the American mobile broadband industry has hinged on a small courtroom in lower Manhattan, where carriers and regulators are squaring off over a plan to reshape the wireless business as we know it. The last hurdle to T-Mobile's purchase of Sprint is a federal lawsuit, filed by ten state attorneys general in the Southern District of New York, accusing the merger of being anti-competitive. This is regulators’ last chance to stop the merger from going through, by proving that a merged T-Mobile will mean higher prices and worse service for wireless customers.