T-Mobile has “a lasting advantage” over AT&T and Verizon on spectrum for 5G, Neville Ray, T-Mobile president-technology, blogged Monday. In the second phase of 5G, “everyone in the industry is playing the same game -- building out optimal mid-band spectrum to deliver the perfect combo of speeds and coverage,” Ray said: Verizon will have access to only 60 MHz of C-band spectrum and AT&T 40 MHz by year-end, with the rest available in late 2023.

Verizon is starting to install C-band radio access network equipment from Ericsson and Samsung. Verizon was the top bidder in the auction, gaining an average of 161 MHz nationwide. “Although the initial spectrum won’t be cleared until the end of this year, Verizon and its vendor partners have already begun the work to ensure the super-fast 5G Ultra Wideband service using C-band is deployed to 100 million customers by March 2022,” the provider said Monday.

Verizon and Tracfone countered arguments by the American Antitrust Institute (see 2104050029) on their proposed deal, in a filing posted Monday in FCC docket 21-112. “AAI is wrong on the competition analysis framework that applies to [mobile virtual network operators] and the wireless marketplace,” the companies said: “Despite a longstanding, consistent and bipartisan view that MVNO subscribers should be attributed to their host [carriers] when calculating wireless market shares, AAI now claims that such an approach is ‘flawed and misleading’ and ‘contrary to basic economics.’” The companies said AAI is wrong “to posit a separate prepaid wireless product market, but in any event the Verizon/TracFone combination will fuel more competition for prepaid customers.”

Bernstein’s Peter Supino questioned Dish Network complaints that T-Mobile closing its CDMA network hurts competition (see 2104140036). “The incremental cost to migrate Dish's customers to a more advanced network is not high,” he told investors Monday. Prepaid churn is high, “so a significant amount of the base will have an opportunity to update their phones,” he said: “Customer phones need to be upgraded to use Dish's standalone 5G network anyway.” But “millions of Boost customers, the majority of whom are underserved and face income challenges, are at risk of being impacted,” said a Dish spokesperson. “This issue is not just about devices, which are in limited supply due to global chip shortages and LG's exit from the market, or cost. As T-Mobile well knows, technology migrations take time.”

The Communications Workers of America said Friday the FCC took the right steps in sending letters to Verizon and Tracfone on their proposed deal (see 2104140064). “CWA and a growing coalition, including seventeen state attorneys general, have been urging the FCC to more closely scrutinize how Verizon intends to serve TracFone’s millions of low-income families who rely on the Lifeline program,” said Brian Thorn, CWA senior researcher.

Building open radio access networks could be difficult, warned the Marconi Society in a filing posted Friday in FCC docket 21-63. “In Open RAN, the network integration has no single owner and is therefore problematic,” said the society. “While integration is easier in a private/enterprise network, public networks are much more complex and integrating network elements into a coherent, efficient RAN is proving to be difficult. Solving this integration gap requires new technology intervention and investments.” Commissioners approved an ORAN notice of inquiry 4-0 last month (see 2103170049).

Strand Consult questioned whether T-Mobile is keeping a commitment to add jobs, made as part of its buy of Sprint, in a report Friday on four-to-three combinations. Carriers sometimes oversell what they can do after a combination, Strand said. “When mobile operators fail to keep their promises, this reflects poorly on future consolidations,” the firm said: “Consider how T-Mobile promised to increase jobs following the merger. While there may be hiring in specialized areas, the total employment of the new entity is well below the total number of jobs of the two parties before.” T-Mobile didn’t comment.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sent back to the National Labor Relations Board a dispute over whether T-Mobile unlawfully set up a shadow labor organization, T Voice, to undermine support for the Communications Workers of America. “Essential to the Board’s decision here was its view that an organization does not engage in ‘dealing with’ an employer unless it makes ‘group proposals’ to the employer,” said a unanimous Friday decision, written by Judge Judith Rogers, in docket 20-1044. “The ‘group proposals’ requirement is in tension with the cases cited by CWA in which the Board found there was a labor organization without examining whether employee proposals had been embraced by the group through any formal process.” Rogers said NLRB must consider the difference between a group proposal, which is protected under the National Labor Relations Act, and feedback from workers to management. The court said it normally would defer to the NLRB, but in this case, given unanswered questions, it remanded the case for further consideration. “The court is left uncertain about what the record must show for the Board to find that an organization made group proposals, as opposed to engaging in mere brainstorming. Is it enough that an employee representative makes a proposal while acting in a representative capacity?” Rogers wrote. Judges Harry Edwards and David Tatel were the other panel members. T-Mobile and CWA didn't comment.

Puerto Rico’s DWireless agreed to pay an $11,000 civil penalty, implement a compliance plan and admit it operated unlicensed devices in an unauthorized manner, causing interference to FAA terminal Doppler weather radar, the FCC said Thursday. The bureau initially proposed a $25,000 penalty, but the wireless ISP “demonstrated that it could not pay the full amount of the proposed fine,” the bureau said. The violations concerned devices configured to operate on a 40 MHz channel centered on 5.585 GHz, which affected radar at San Juan International Airport, the bureau said.

Verizon is “pleased the FCC's process continues to progress” and is “reviewing the FCC's request,” a spokesperson said in response to a Wednesday letter posing questions on the company’s proposed Tracfone buy (see 2104140064). “We feel confident that the FCC will recognize the consumer benefits of strengthening competition for value-conscious prepaid customers and of bringing facilities-based competition for wireless Lifeline services,” the spokesperson said.