MetroPCS Rebukes CPUC 'Gamesmanship' in USF Fee Fight

T-Mobile’s MetroPCS pressed a district court to grant summary judgment in its favor, while rejecting a cross-motion by the California Public Utilities Commission, in a dispute about USF surcharges. MetroPCS claims the CPUC unlawfully treated two-thirds of MetroPCS revenue as intrastate by imposing USF surcharges on prepaid wireless (see 2304100043 and 2303220063). “The undisputed evidence shows that MetroPCS’s methodologies for allocating revenue between the voice, text, and data components of its prepaid wireless plans were consistent with [generally accepted accounting principles] GAAP’s neutral and objective guidance for revenue allocation and with economic principles followed by the FCC,” the carrier said in a reply brief Tuesday at the U.S. District Court of Northern California (case 3:17-cv-05959-JD). “These methodologies accordingly were reasonable as a matter of law.” The CPUC’s resolutions “impermissibly imposed surcharges on MetroPCS’s broadband and other nonsurchargeable revenue -- whether viewed by comparing MetroPCS’s revenue allocations on a plan-by-plan basis with the CPUC’s intrastate factors, or on a total revenue basis -- and violated the FCC’s competitive neutrality requirement.” In a separate filing Tuesday, MetroPCS opposed a CPUC motion to strike MetroPCS evidence. “This is pure gamesmanship,” said the T-Mobile subsidiary. “The CPUC invokes no rule permitting the striking of MetroPCS’s timely filed fact and expert witness declarations, and it does not object to their admissibility.” It said the CPUC request “is as legally unsound as it is unfair.”