FCC Pauses T-Mobile/Sprint Review Shot Clock
The FCC Tuesday paused the unofficial 180-day shot clock on its review of T-Mobile buying Sprint. The FCC cited a “substantially revised" and more complex network engineering model T-Mobile submitted Sept. 5 and a business model T-Mobile executives described on…
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Aug. 29 but didn't disclose until Sept. 5. T-Mobile has also promised additional economic modeling it has yet to file, said a letter from Wireless Bureau Chief Donald Stockdale and David Lawrence, director of the task force reviewing the deal. "The clock will remain stopped until the Applicants have completed the record on which they intend to rely and a reasonable period of time has passed for staff and third-party review." The two companies released a joint statement. "We appreciate that the FCC is taking the time necessary to fully understand the merits," the companies said. "The additional review time is common to FCC merger reviews and we recently supplied a large amount of data to the FCC that they want sufficient time to assess. We are confident that this transaction is pro-competitive, good for the country and good for American consumers, and we look forward to continuing to work with the FCC as they evaluate our plans." The Wireless Bureau meanwhile asked for data from Verizon, as part of the agency’s ongoing analysis of the deal. The bureau said in a Monday letter in Tuesday's Daily Digest and docket 18-197 it may seek other information. AT&T officials said they were called in by the FCC to discuss the company’s “5G deployment plans” relative to the deal. The bureau also requested data from AT&T and from U.S. Cellular (see here and here). Also Tuesday, T-Mobile said it signed a multiyear, $3.5 billion contract with Ericsson to support the carrier's nationwide deployment of 5G. “Ericsson will provide T-Mobile with the latest 5G New Radio hardware and software compliant with 3GPP standards,” T-Mobile said. “The contract also encompasses Ericsson’s digital services solutions, including dynamic orchestration, business support systems (BSS) and Ericsson Cloud Core, enabling T-Mobile to rapidly launch innovative and groundbreaking 5G experiences.”