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Earlier this month, Dish Network wrote a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) complaining about T-Mobile’s plans to shutdown its CDMA network by January 2022. As argued by Dish, this is a premature date that would cause “significant device/chip shortages that make it even more difficult to acquire compatible replacement devices prior to the shutdown.”
The company also pointed out that this premature CDMA shutdown date would cause them to lose a substantial number of Boost Mobile customers. This is because these customers will need to purchase a new (more expensive) 5G smartphone or lose their service completely.
In its letter, Dish argued that this “forced migration of this scale under this accelerated time frame is simply not possible.”
T-Mobile has responded to Dish’s letter and also wrote to the FCC. T-Mo cited an agreement that it previously made with Dish where they needed to provide a six-month advance notice of its CDMA network shutdown plans. The company shared that they had given Dish more than six months. As a matter of fact, they gave Dish a 14-month advance notice.
The Un-Carrier believes that Boost’s current predicament is a result of poor planning on their part. “Dish appears to have taken minimal steps to begin migrating its customers to 5G.”
In addition to its poor planning, T-Mobile pointed out that Dish had been “adding a substantial number of new customers onto the CDMA network each month and has extended the end date for new legacy Sprint network activations from January 1, 2021 to June 1, 2021, despite the fact that ceasing new CDMA activations would be a very simple step to take to move toward a timely migration.”
With regards to its supply situation, T-Mobile says that Dish is likely aware of the situation but has “apparently failed to undertake the necessary actions to hedge supply shortages of its preferred devices.” T-Mobile also pointed out that it offered to help Dish obtain devices.
For its part, T-Mobile clarified that they are also migrating their CDMA customers, which is “a much larger number of customers -- on exactly the same timelines as Dish’s Boost-branded customer base.”
T-Mobile shared that 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.”
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