T-Mobile and Dish take CDMA network showdown to California Public Utilities Commission

To get an idea of how the Dish/T-Mobile case went in front of the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC), this one bit of testimony might shed some light: They literally started to shut off the lights in the building before all was said and done. The purpose of the hearing was to determine if the CPUC should penalize T-Mobile for lying to the Commission about its obligations in the merger with Sprint. The CPUC approved the transaction in April 2020 with conditions. Prior to the approval, T-Mobile had pledged that no former Sprint customer would suffer any service degradation as a result of the merger. Dish points out that Boost Mobile customers are often low-income, rural and transient customers who are difficult to get ahold of because they don’t use traditional snail mail addresses. Plus, Dish was under the impression they had more time to complete the transition. A good share of questioning focused on what would happen “within three years of the merger’s closing,” and where exactly the "three years" applied. T-Mobile said it was to have three years to complete its work, but it was never under an obligation to maintain the CDMA network for three years "no matter what." T-Mobile has a deadline of October 15 to submit a post-hearing brief, and Dish was given a deadline of October 29 to submit its reply. Based on the timeline that T-Mobile is operating under, Dish has about 95 days to convert Boost customers, or they’ll be without service on January 1, 2022.