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T-Mobile and Sprint, the third and fourth largest U.S. wireless carriers respectively, have called off merger talks, although they have left the door open in a joint statement:
Sprint Corp and T-Mobile US Inc said on Saturday they have called off merger talks to create a stronger U.S. wireless company to rival market leaders, leaving No. 4 provider Sprint to engineer a turnaround on its own.
The announcement marks the latest failed attempt to combine the third- and fourth-largest U.S. wireless carriers, as Sprint parent SoftBank Group Corp and T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom AG, show unwillingness to part with too much of their prized U.S. telecom assets. A combined company would have had more than 130 million U.S. subscribers, behind Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Inc.
The failed merger could also help keep wireless prices low as all four providers have been heavily discounting their cellphone plans in a battle for consumers. "Consumers are better off without the merger because Sprint and T-Mobile will continue to compete fiercely for budget-conscious customers," said Erik Gordon, a Ross School of Business professor at the University of Michigan.
The companies' unusual step of making a joint announcement on the canceled negotiations could indicate they still recognize the merits of a merger, keeping the door open for potential future talks.
Also at Bloomberg, NYT, and Ars Technica.
Previously: Sprint: Purchase of T-Mobile Promotes Competition
Inside the Plan to Pull Sprint Out of its Death Spiral
Related: Sprint the Only US Telecomm to Challenge NSA
T-Mobile and Verizon Mobile Plans Change; Probably Not Better for Consumers
Are True Burner Phones Now Impossible in the USA?
T-Mobile's New 600 MHz Network Rollout Begins This Summer
Verizon Wireless Divides Unlimited Plan Into Three Worse Options
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday November 06 2017, @05:42PM (5 children)
The more competitors there are, the better off us peasants are. If there were enough competitors to make it a highly competitive market (at least 15 or so players), then most of the abuses that we're currently seeing would go away because competitive pressures would encourage companies to innovate.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday November 06 2017, @06:03PM (2 children)
This particular merger never made any sense anyway.
Trying to marry T-Mobile's mostly modern network with that horrible creaking CDMA lashup that Sprint still uses never made sense.
Their network barely extends out of the cities, their phones don't allow migration [whistleout.com] to other networks (except very late model dual technology models-$$$).
I don't think Sprint can survive without a major technology change, which they have not even begun. Other than spectrum, I don't know what attraction Sprint held for T-Mo.
Verizon doesn't need them.
T-Mobile doesn't want them.
They have one market that matches their technology and network reach: Urban/Suburban/City-Center Utility-Industrial-infrastructural control and monitoring systems (IOT for government). Their network has the speed, range, and coverage to handle that reasonably well. Perhaps they just just kick voice customers to the curb, down-size and serve that market.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Monday November 06 2017, @06:58PM (1 child)
I think they would be after the LTE network. TMobile is proud of their network (I think they always claim fastest), but increasing number of towers is tough. Eventually the operators will be moving completely to Voice over LTE, but a lot of antennas will be needed to increase service area.
I don't watch the handset market closely, but the mid-range models I look at typically have either GSM only or CDMA and GSM now. Google Fi, for example operates on both TMobile and Sprint's networks (although with very specific hardware).
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Monday November 06 2017, @07:42PM
A tower is a tower.
Almost all towers now-days are owned by tower companies, and the same tower servers just about all carriers.
Hang a few more antenna's on it, slap a few more transmitters in the racks in the shed, and all of a sudden you carry Sprint as well as At&T.
They don't need new towers to to go to GSM/LTE, those towers already exist.
LTE is (at its heart) a wholesale switch to GSM. But that's not much more than another transmitter slid into the rack in the shed that does both CDMA and GSM and takes less rack space then the last generation of either. Maybe you have to hang additional radiators up the tower.
But this switch is far from complete. And they are stuck with customers running old CDMA phones that can't migrate to LTE.
I suspect there's a lot more value in the licenses for spectrum held by Sprint than any other single component.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday November 06 2017, @08:03PM (1 child)
What shocked me when I visited the UK in 2012 was the number of networks I could choose from.
I don't think they all had their own towers, most were probably MVNO's, but mobile access is really cheap in the UK because of competition.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday November 06 2017, @08:41PM
Basically, if you compare telecom performance in the US to the rest of the developed world, it's downright embarrassing. That's true whether you're looking at mobile or wired, voice or TCP/IP.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.