Two weeks after the fact, T-Mobile gained California’s blessing to take over Sprint yesterday, as the California Public Utilities Commission unanimously approved a decision that imposes a long list of requirements that the newly combined company is expected to meet in California.

Expected, but not guaranteed.

As he presented the decision, Clifford Rechtschaffen, the commissioner in charge of the CPUC’s review, said that “the applicants continue to dispute our jurisdiction to review wireless mergers. We very fundamentally disagree on this point and the decision rejects their challenge to our jurisdiction”.… More

T-Mobile and Sprint will finally get permission to merge from the California Public Utilities Commission later today, assuming commissioners approve a revised draft decision that was posted yesterday. Nothing is guaranteed – the vote could be delayed, for example – but given that commissioners met in closed session to discuss it on Monday and yesterday’s revision is more of a refinement than a major change to the original draft, approval looks like a good bet.… More

The California Public Utilities Commission will hold a rare closed door meeting later this morning to discuss the T-Mobile/Sprint merger. The announcement was made on Friday morning, following the Thursday afternoon flurry of filings and weeks of lobbying by supporters and opponents of the deal.

Although the commission is careful to provide proper notice that a closed door “ratesetting deliberative meeting” might be held in this sort of case, it’s unusual. I don’t follow all the action everyday at the commission, so I won’t hazard a guess as to how often they do this, but I can’t recall it ever happening in a proceeding that I’ve been following.… More

A final flurry of rebuttals defending and attacking T-Mobile’s de facto takeover of Sprint landed at the California Public Utilities Commission yesterday. The bulk of the comments amount to what I said before. But there are some interesting bits amongst all that.

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) – the primary telecoms union in California – unearthed a U.S. congressional report from 1993, when the lines were drawn between state and federal jurisdiction over mobile carriers.… More

In a whirlwind of conference calls with California Public Utilities Commission staff and one key commissioner, T-Mobile said it would abide by an order that stopped its merger with Sprint on an operational level in California, at least until next week’s CPUC meeting. When the two companies closed their deal last week without permission from the CPUC staff, commissioner Clifford Rechtschaffen, who is in charge of the regulatory review, quickly directed them to “not begin merger of their California operations until after the CPUC issues a final decision”.… More