T-Mobile, Dish Clash at CPUC on AT&T Deal Impact

T-Mobile asked the California Public Utilities Commission to delay a possible status conference on Dish Network’s CDMA complaint at least until after Dish modifies its petition to address the impact of its $5 billion AT&T agreement (see 2107190003). T-Mobile doesn’t think the conference is needed but said it should be held at the earliest the week of Aug. 16, the carrier Monday emailed Administrative Law Judge Karl Bemesderfer through the service list for docket A.18-07-011. Dish replied that it disagreed with T-Mobile’s request except for scheduling the conference for that Aug. 16 week. The companies clashed over the weekend about the AT&T agreement. Dish never told the CPUC the company was in talks with AT&T “or the potential ramifications of the agreement on its migration efforts,” T-Mobile wrote Friday to Commissioner Cliff Rechtschaffen. The timing suggests Dish had “ulterior motives” as it complained about the CDMA shutdown to the CPUC, T-Mobile said. “At a minimum, the timing suggests DISH was focused on negotiating this agreement with AT&T, and thus distracted from executing on CDMA migration efforts over the ten months that have elapsed since T-Mobile first provided DISH with notice of the CDMA sunset. It is also possible that DISH has been purposely dragging its feet in upgrading its Boost CDMA customers so that it can save itself money by finalizing the agreement with AT&T and then transitioning those customers directly to AT&T’s network when it is ready to accept Boost customers, rather than incurring the costs of transitioning them to T-Mobile’s network first.” Dish wrote Saturday to Rechtschaffen that T-Mobile’s arguments lack merit. The AT&T agreement doesn’t alter customer harm that would result from T-Mobile prematurely shutting down the old network, said Dish: AT&T's network doesn’t support CDMA.