T-Mobile Contests ALJs' Fine for Allegedly Misleading CPUC on CDMA

T-Mobile appealed a $5.3 million possible fine at the California Public Utilities Commission related to statements about its CDMA shutdown. Two CPUC administrative law judges ruled last month that the carrier misled the CPUC with false statements that it would have a three-year customer migration period for Sprint customers to T-Mobile and Boost Mobile customers to Dish Network (see 2204260061). The record doesn’t support a CPUC Rule 1.1 violation, the “proposed penalty calculation is flawed and the fine it would impose is unwarranted,” T-Mobile said Wednesday in docket A.18-07-012. T-Mobile didn’t agree to operate the CDMA network for three years or say it would maintain CDMA until all Boost customers were migrated, said the carrier: The ALJs’ ruling “would have the Commission find that T-Mobile’s network integration has proceeded too quickly.” Also, “the threatened consumer harm that DISH trumpeted and on which the penalty calculation is based never materialized,” it said. “T-Mobile invested billions of dollars upgrading and integrating the combined network, made accommodations to DISH on the CDMA network sunset schedule, arranged for additional handset supply to DISH, resolved other pending issues in an agreement with DISH” that was cleared by DOJ “and assured that essentially all Boost CDMA customers were migrated in well under three years.”