In what’s described as a “proposed decision,” California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) Administrative Law Judge Karl J. Bemesderfer has denied a petition by Dish Network that seeks more time in migrating CDMA customers off T-Mobile’s network.
In a filing last week, the CPUC said the decision by ALJ Bemesderfer has no legal effect “until and unless” the commission hears the item and votes to approve it. The item may be heard, at the earliest, at the California commission’s March 17 meeting.
But it essentially signals defeat for Dish at the CPUC level on this item. The decision by ALJ Bemesderfer said “in this circumstance, we find that it is appropriate to leave the determination of what constitutes reasonable notice of the proposed CDMA shutdown to the federal government. Thus, we deny” the Petition for Modification (PFM) sought by Dish.
Dish said it had no comment on the matter when Fierce reached out.
T-Mobile’s shutdown of its CDMA network, which it inherited from Sprint, was the subject of much debate last year. Dish was under the impression that it had up to three years at least, to migrate Boost Mobile subscribers currently on the CDMA network to new handsets that work on T-Mobile’s newer network, or until July 2023. Dish is using T-Mobile’s network under an MVNO arrangement while it builds its own 5G network.
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Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen at one point last year described T-Mobile as the “magenta Grinch” because its actions were going to leave Boost customers in the lurch. T-Mobile countered that Dish needed to do its job in getting new handsets into the hands of its Boost customers.
In October, T-Mobile agreed to extend the life of the CDMA network by three more months, until March 31, 2022. According to the CPUC’s decision, T-Mobile filed an updated response on January 13, 2022, indicating that additional progress had been made in migrating Boost customers and that the migration Dish had estimated would be achieved by April 1, 2022, had already occurred by the end of December 2021.
Best shot
It looked as though California represented Dish’s best shot at getting a government entity to intervene and delay the shutdown, said New Street Research analyst Blair Levin in a report for investors over the weekend.
“While the DoJ may jawbone in ways that incrementally delay the shutdown, its inaction to date – as well as the inaction of the FCC – suggests to us that the federal government is unlikely to give Dish the relief it seeks,” Levin wrote.
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While it’s not certain, the expectation is the full commission will uphold the ALJ’s decision.
There’s still the pending matter in which the CPUC is considering sanctions against T-Mobile for certain statements its executives made related to the issue, Levin noted. If the CPUC applies such sanctions, it’s probably not going to be material to investors, according to New Street – and the chances are low that the sanctions will include some further delay in shutting down the network.
During the earnings call last week, T-Mobile said it’s on track to end the CDMA network as planned on March 31, 2022, reinforcing comments CEO Mike Sievert made last fall. For T-Mobile, CFO Peter Osvaldik said they’re expecting “probably in the order of a couple hundred thousand phone subscribers” mostly representing the tail end of “non-usage” subscribers.