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California Public Utilities Commission to review T-Mobile-Sprint merger

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The proposed merger of T-Mobile and Sprint is currently being reviewed by the FCC and DoJ, but those aren’t the only groups that want to take a closer look at the deal.

The California Public Utilities Convention (CPUC) has revealed that it wants to hold hearings to learn more about the T-Mobile-Sprint merger. Public participation hearings will be held in November and December, followed by an evidentiary hearing Feb. 6-9, opening comments by May 10, and reply comments by May 24. The CPUC aims to have a decision regarding its review of the T-Mobile-Sprint merger by June.

The group says that it wants to determine if the merger is in the public interest of the residents of California. According to The Deal, hearings like these are uncommon and may indicate that the CPUC will give the T-Mobile-Sprint merger “rigorous scrutiny.”

The issues that the CPUC will consider during its review include:

The CPUC went on to shed more light on the issues that it’ll consider while reviewing the proposed merger:

“Obtaining satisfactory answers to the above questions will require consideration of multiple factual issues. These include, but are necessarily limited to, issues related to innovation, service quality, customer satisfaction, pricing policies, pre-paid services, wholesale markets, the roll-out of 5G services (particularly in rural markets), system integration, device compatibility, customer migration, net neutrality, customer privacy and mandatory arbitration clauses. Accordingly, evidentiary hearing is needed on these issues.”

The FCC recently paused its 180-day shot clock on its review of the T-Mobile-Sprint merger, saying that it needs more time to receive all of T-Mobile and Sprint’s documents and review them. T-Mobile and Sprint have said that they expect their merger to close no later than the first half of 2019, but it’s unclear how things like this CPUC review and the FCC’s continued shot clock delay might impact the merger and its schedule.

Via: FierceWireless
Source: The Deal

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