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Sprint Working on Potential T-Mobile US Purchase

Friday December 13, 2013 1:27 pm PST by Juli Clover
sprinttmobileSprint is preparing a possible bid for T-Mobile US, reports The Wall Street Journal. If permitted by antitrust regulators, a potential merger between the two companies would result in just three major carriers in the United States.

Depending on the stake that Sprint attempts to buy, the deal could be worth more than $20 billion. While Sprint is still looking into regulatory concerns, a bid could potentially come as early as the first half of 2014.
Sprint hasn't yet decided whether to move ahead with a bid. Going forward despite regulators' concerns would be highly risky. Any pursuit of a bid by Sprint could be aimed at testing antitrust officials' reaction to a deal, and a bad reaction could put an end to the effort.
Currently, T-Mobile US, which operates under the T-Mobile, MetroPCS and GoSmart brands, is the fourth largest carrier in the United States with 45 million customers, while Sprint is the third largest carrier with 54 million customers. Combined, the two companies would be come close to reaching the subscriber numbers of the larger carriers in the U.S., Verizon and AT&T, at 119 million and 108 million customers each, respectively.

Sprint and T-Mobile have each struggled to keep up with competitors like Verizon and AT&T, which have been able to implement much larger LTE networks. A merger between the two companies would likely see significant service improvements for customers, due to a larger network infrastructure and the means to make additional spectrum purchases.

Both Sprint and T-Mobile offer perks unavailable on other networks, such as T-Mobile's "UnCarrier" plans that divorce device costs from plan costs and Sprint's unlimited data plans. Sprint and T-Mobile currently operate using different technologies, as Sprint is a CDMA network while T-Mobile is GSM.

It is unclear whether a merger between Sprint and T-Mobile will be permitted, as AT&T previously tried to purchase T-Mobile US in 2011. The Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice both made moves to block the transaction, putting an end to the acquisition. AT&T had planned to pay $39 billion in cash and stock for the company.

According to the report, Deutsche Telekom AG, which owns approximately 67 percent of T-Mobile US, is looking to exit the U.S. market.

[ 160 comments ]


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johnhw
68 months ago
No. Just no.
Rating: 41 Votes
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shadowkhas
68 months ago
No thank you. I went to T-Mobile to get away from the junk of the other carriers.
Rating: 35 Votes
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ashwin4
68 months ago
No! Why? I love how tmobile made a comeback this year! Stay away Sprint. :mad:
Rating: 23 Votes
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WhackyNinja
68 months ago
What? But...What? WHAT?! No.

Rating: 9 Votes
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dan1000
68 months ago
I'd far prefer it the other way around, with T-Mobile buying Sprint. Size difference? Sure, but T-Mobile is related to Deutsche Telecom, which is plenty big enough.
Rating: 7 Votes
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Makosuke
68 months ago
Oh, great. The crappiest of the already crappy Big Three wants to buy the only half-decent major carrier.

T-Mobile's new, fairly transpared "Un-carrier" stuff was what actually got me to switch from prepaid to a contract on my iPhone. Sure as hell not going to bend over for Sprint.
Rating: 6 Votes
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Col Ronson
68 months ago
what a hilariously terrible idea. Two completely opposite networks trying to integrate, haha what a joke. Sprint just wants Tmobile's far superior LTE network.
Rating: 6 Votes
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undesign
68 months ago
FCC should block this. Hopefully they do.
Rating: 5 Votes
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sergey19
68 months ago
From an anti-trust perspective, I think the merger would be allowed to go through. My reasoning behind this is that if AT&T was to merge with T-Mobile it would create one company that would be enormous (much larger than any other carriers out there) and so it would just dominate the market and have serious control over it. However, if Sprint were to merge with T-Mobile it wouldn't create such a problem because it would just lead to a carrier that could better compete with AT&T and Verizon.

AT&T and T-Mobile:
-One major carrier that would dominate the market
-Two medium sized carriers that would struggle to keep up

Spring and T-Mobile:
-Three carriers that would be about evenly matched, leading to major competition

Whether or not it makes sense for Sprint to merge with T-Mobile (due to the technological aspect as well as others) is a different story, but I think that if the two carriers do reach an agreement, they would be allowed to merge.
Rating: 5 Votes
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Reason077
68 months ago

Apple isn't a monopoly.

You might try a monopsony.


And you might try monopony.

Rating: 4 Votes

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