The wrangling over T-Mobile’s take over of Sprint continues in California. Yesterday, three organisations that stood against the merger during the nearly two years that it was under review asked the California Public Utilities Commission to reconsider its 16 April 2020 approval. But T-Mobile didn’t.
The CPUC’s public advocates office, TURN (lately standing for The Utility Reform Network) and the Greenlining Institute filed a joint application for rehearing that rehashes the arguments and evidence they previously offered in their failed bid to kill the transaction. Commissioners will go through the motions of considering the request, but there’s little chance that they’ll change their mind.
But once the rehearing is denied, the final procedural box will be ticked at the CPUC, and opponents will be free to challenge the decision in a court – likely a Californian court. The legal basis for their appeal is a section of California public utilities law that tasks the CPUC with ensuring that mergers of public utilities are “in the public interest”, do not “adversely affect competition” and, if there are any “significant adverse consequences”, impose “mitigation measures” that fix the problem. It’s no surprise that opponents believe none of that happened, and that the CPUC’s decision “contains numerous inconsistent and contradictory statements and analysis that fail to support its findings of fact and conclusions of law”, another potential legal defect that an appeals court might consider.
Yesterday was a deadline for requesting a rehearing of the T-Mobile/Sprint deal, which T-Mobile seems to have ignored. That could mean a couple things. T-Mobile might want to make a point by waiting until the next deadline – 27 May 2020 – which is for requesting rehearings of matters that don’t involve mergers, since it never conceded that the CPUC has the jurisdiction to rule on the transaction. Or it’ll put off going to court until the CPUC tries to enforce some of the conditions it imposed, like telling T-Mobile to add 1,000 jobs to its newly combined Californian workforce.
One thing you can bet on: T-Mobile isn’t going to meekly submit to the State of California’s professed authority.
Links to arguments, exhibits and other paperwork filed at the CPUC and elsewhere are here.
My clients include California cities who do business with T-Mobile. I like to think that has no bearing on my commentary. Take it for what it’s worth.