Comments Disagree on Commission Review of T-Mobile/UScellular Order
T-Mobile defended the FCC's bureau-level order approving the company’s buy of spectrum and other wireless assets from UScellular. Along with Array Digital Infrastructure, the new name for UScellular, T-Mobile asked the FCC to reject an application for review filed by the Rural Wireless Association, the Open Technology Institute at New America, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society and the Communications Workers of America (see 2507310041).
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The AFR “fails to make the showing required” under FCC rules “to warrant review of the Order and presents no basis for designating the Transaction for a hearing,” said a filing posted Friday in docket 24-286. The AFR also “presents no actual evidence of a prejudicial procedural error (or any procedural error at all),” the companies said. It “provides no legal basis requiring the Commission to have acted on the Transaction, as transactions of similar size and scope have been regularly decided at the Bureau level based on delegated authority.”
Public Knowledge filed in support of the AFR, noting the competition concerns DOJ raised. The full commission should have been asked to approve the buy, PK said. The deal “involves the transfer of control of the fourth largest wireless carrier to the third largest, including the transfer of spectrum that covers over 12 million Americans for a price of over $3 billion,” the group said. "A transaction of this size … is not minor, routine, or settled in nature,” PK said. Immediate action wasn’t necessary. As the FCC order notes, “UScellular is not a failing firm but rather is selling its assets ‘based on a thorough evaluation of the wireless industry; the growth of the tower market and the potential for UScellular as a tower company,'” PK said.