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posted by martyb on Monday April 30 2018, @02:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the third-time's-the-charm? dept.

T-Mobile, Sprint to merge in all-stock deal

"T-Mobile US Inc. and Sprint Corp. agreed on Sunday to merge in an all-stock transaction, following on-again, off-again talks to combine the two companies." foxbusiness.com/markets/t-mobile-sprint-to-merge-in-all-stock-deal

T-Mobile and Sprint to Attempt Merger

T-Mobile and Sprint have reached an agreement to merge. The combined company would be called T-Mobile. Now they face the regulators, and are already arguing for it as a move for America to remain competitive with China on 5G:

T-Mobile and Sprint reached a $26.5 billion merger agreement Sunday that would reduce the U.S. wireless industry to three major players — that is, if the Trump administration's antitrust regulators let the deal go through. The nation's third- and fourth-largest wireless companies have been considering a combination for years, one that would bulk them up to a similar size as industry giants Verizon and AT&T. But a 2014 attempt fell apart amid resistance from the Obama administration.

Consumers worry a less crowded telecom field could result in higher prices, while workers unions are concerned about potential job losses.

In a conference call with Wall Street analysts, Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure acknowledged that getting regulatory approval is "the elephant in the room," and one of the first things the companies did after sending out the deal's news release was to call Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. The companies stressed that they plan to have more employees following the combination, particularly in rural areas, than they do as stand-alone companies now. They also emphasized that the deal would help accelerate their development of faster 5G wireless networks and ensure that the U.S. doesn't cede leadership on the technology to China.

And they said the combination would allow them to better compete not only with AT&T and Verizon but also with Comcast and others as the wireless, broadband and video industries converge. "This isn't a case of going from 4 to 3 wireless companies — there are now at least 7 or 8 big competitors in this converging market," T-Mobile chief executive John Legere said in a statement.

T-Mobile press release. Also at Bloomberg.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 30 2018, @04:36PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 30 2018, @04:36PM (#673795)

    We already let bigger companies merge, creating bigger problems. It isn't fair or reasonable to now say that T-Mobile can't do likewise.

    We broke up AT&T for good reason, but lobbying and short memories let it get back together again. Maybe they will merge with Verizon.

    Breaking up companies is very difficult work. It requires a legal battle that lasts longer than a presidential term.

  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday April 30 2018, @06:14PM (3 children)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Monday April 30 2018, @06:14PM (#673843)

    The one thing I'll say here is that Spring and T-mobile are the #3 and #4 wireless companies right now: basically the two biggest losers. They've been hoping to merge for a long time, because neither one of them is doing all that great by themselves.

    If one of the companies were Verizon, I think it'd be completely obvious that such a merger shouldn't go through. Verizon is probably easily the biggest wireless company now, so a merger with them would only create a near-monopoly, and probably a real monopoly before too long. But with T-mo and Sprint, if they don't merge, how likely is it that one of them will simply fail after a while?

    Personally, I use Ting which is a Spring MVNO, and I'm going to be switching to a Verizon MVNO pretty soon because I'm sick of Sprint's lousy signal quality, and I can get a deal that's just as cheap, if not cheaper, with a Verizon MVNO.

    • (Score: 2) by DavePolaschek on Monday April 30 2018, @07:20PM (2 children)

      by DavePolaschek (6129) on Monday April 30 2018, @07:20PM (#673869) Homepage Journal

      Ting is also a T-Mobile MVNO if you switch to a GSM phone.

      • (Score: 2, Disagree) by Grishnakh on Monday April 30 2018, @08:20PM (1 child)

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Monday April 30 2018, @08:20PM (#673900)

        Oh yeah, I forgot about that. That's not much help: T-mobile's network is even worse than Sprint's. I used to be a T-mo customer years ago.

        It's too bad Ting never figured out how to make universal unlocked phones work on both networks simultaneously; it'd help their performance a lot I suspect, being able to switch at will between the networks (not on the same call though, I'm sure).

        • (Score: 2) by DavePolaschek on Tuesday May 01 2018, @03:36PM

          by DavePolaschek (6129) on Tuesday May 01 2018, @03:36PM (#674168) Homepage Journal

          T-Mo's gotten a lot better. Used to be driving I-80 from the Mississippi to Reno you'd be mostly without signal. Now you even get data most of that way, and US 40 and US 50 have coverage much of the way. They've really filled in the gaps in the west in the past two years.