Even if the federal justice department has an Ajit Pai-like epiphany about T-Mobile’s proposed takeover of Sprint and approves the deal today – not likely – there’s diminishing hope that California’s review of the merger will wrap up before August. And the possibility of a mid-September decision is growing.
There are three structural reasons for the delay. First, the CPUC only has one voting meeting scheduled for July, on the 11th, and there’s a four week gap between the commission’s last August meeting and its first one in September. Second, there’s a statutory minimum 30-day public review period between the publication of a draft decision and a vote by commissioners.
To make the 11 July 2019 meeting agenda, the CPUC administrative law judge managing the case, Karl Bemesderfer, would have to publish his proposed decision by next Tuesday. He could do that, but the third structural problem – the commission’s slow moving, adversarial and quasi-judicial decision making process – argues against it.
Two weeks ago, T-Mobile filed a motion to “advise” the CPUC about the deal it reached with the Federal Communications Commission. That set a two-week clock ticking for opponents to weigh in. Yesterday, the CPUC’s public advocates office (PAO) argued that commission decisions have to based on what’s in the official record, and not on news bulletins from Washington, D.C. The PAO’s response pointed out that T-Mobile took exactly that position earlier this year…
Joint Applicants’ [i.e. T-Mobile’s and Sprint’s] request to “advise” the Commission of their FCC filings is essentially the same as DISH Network’s January 29, 2019, Motion to Take Official Notice of Supplemental Authority, which requested that DISH’s FCC filings be considered in this proceeding. In response to DISH’s Motion, Joint Applicants argued that it “would cause prejudice to the Joint Applicants by enabling DISH to belatedly introduce arguments long after the relevant deadlines have passed, to which the Joint Applicants could have responded had the arguments been timely made.” On February 5, 2019, [Bemesderfer] denied DISH’s request, stating “…introducing what amounts to a legal pleading at this [point] is simply prejudicial to the applicants and so that motion is denied.” The arguments regarding prejudice and timeliness are equally applicable now.
A significant change in the way the merger is put together, such as divesting Boost Mobile or spinning off enough assets to create a new national mobile carrier, is something the CPUC ought to consider. Bemesderfer has allowed new information to be introduced, but has also given opponents a few extra weeks to respond to it. Add in the 30-day public comment period, and a decision might not land on the CPUC’s agenda until it meets on 12 September 2019.
Collected documents from the CPUC’s review of the proposed merger of Sprint and T-Mobile are here.