The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) announced Senior Associate Dean and Professor Douglas Sicker’s appointment as its T-Mobile Compliance Monitor. As Compliance Monitor, Sicker will oversee and evaluate whether T-Mobile is satisfying the conditions the CPUC imposed in approving T-Mobile’s acquisition of Sprint in April 2020, and he will recommend penalties in the event he finds the company has failed to meet those conditions.

Because the merger reduced the number of national mobile providers from four to three, the Commission found that the merger would be in the public interest only if T-Mobile complies with a list of pro-consumer conditions it created. This includes requiring T-Mobile to offer a discounted, low-income service, to deploy fast, 5G service to 99% of California’s population, and to roll out a new home broadband service that will compete with the cable TV and telephone companies’ Internet services.

Sicker stated, “I’m gratified to be able to assist the CPUC in ensuring that TMO delivers on its obligations to bring the values of next generation wireless communications to the people of California, and I look forward to getting started.”

Commissioner Cliff Rechtschaffen, who was the Assigned Commissioner on the case welcomed Sicker, saying, “The Commission is serious about making sure that T-Mobile complies with the requirements we adopted as conditions of our merger approval—I cannot imagine anyone with a better background than Doug to help the Commission make sure T-Mobile lives up to its obligations so that the merger yields public interest benefits for California consumers.”