UPDATE Following DISH’s recent venting to the FCC about T-Mobile’s plans to shut down its CDMA network, T-Mobile has reiterated its case.
DISH recently asked the Commission to intervene, and not allow T-Mobile to shut down the network, in DISH’s view, prematurely. T-Mobile recently announced it plans to turn off the Sprint CDMA network on January 1, 2022. DISH said the move would strand millions of Boost subscribers. T-Mobile has said several times its timetable was explained to DISH and has not changed, Inside Towers reported.
In its latest explanation to the agency, T-Mobile says it wants to “clarify” the situation, in contrast to some of the “disinformation” in the media that its technology move is bad for consumers. It calls those claims “just plain wrong.”
“In truth, all CDMA customers, including DISH’s Boost-branded customers, will receive enormous benefits by migrating as planned onto T-Mobile’s new network, and it is absolutely in their best interest to do so,” says the telecom in its filing this week. “Under our agreement, it is unambiguously DISH’s financial responsibility to migrate customers to the new technology in a timely manner, and if they live up to those obligations, no consumers will be negatively affected by the sunset and in fact will receive substantial benefits.”
The timing, says T-Mobile, is “fully consistent” with its contract with DISH and the government orders approving the transaction. The work “includes the migration of all legacy Sprint customers to the new T-Mobile network – both the large base of Sprint customers retained by T-Mobile as well as those divested to DISH. [W]e are migrating all of T-Mobile’s CDMA customers – a much larger number of customers – on exactly the same timeline as DISH’s Boost-branded customer base,” explains T-Mobile. “This belies any suggestion that it can’t be done on a timely basis or that sticking with our agreed-upon timeline is somehow anti-competitive.”
T-Mobile says DISH appears to have taken “minimal steps” to begin migrating its customers, and has been adding “a substantial number” of new customers to the CDMA network each month. T-Mobile considers CDMA “obsolete” technology that is “substandard and declining with the passage of time.” Migrating customers onto T-Mobile’s new network is in the public interest and not anti-competitive, according to the carrier.
T-Mobile doesn’t believe the FCC needs to step in, saying: “The misinformation campaign that DISH has launched should not impose on the Commission’s time or distract T-Mobile from its focus on building a network for all Americans. The message to DISH must continue to be: honor your agreement, take care of your customers, and go do your job. DISH has the tools in its toolbox and the resources to take care of its wireless customers – it’s time for it to start using them.”
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