Mobile and Sprint restart merger talks ... again
- by Emilio Sims
- in Money
- — Apr 11, 2018
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The two companies are reportedly in merger talks.
Discussions are preliminary, according to a Tuesday report in The Wall Street Journal citing people familiar with the matter.
Last November, T-Mobile and Sprint confirmed that they'd ended their oft-rumored merger negotiations, and we thought that that'd be the end of that.
Sprint and T-Mobile US have restarted merger talks, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter, marking another attempt to combine the No. 4 and No. 3 USA wireless providers. Should it go through, AT&T would become one of the most powerful telecom and media companies in the world. T-Mobile has not yet responded to a similar request. The companies then said they "were unable to find mutually agreeable terms".
T-Mobile CEO John Legere.
T-Mobile and Sprint, the third- and fourth-largest wireless carriers in the USA, are talking once again about a possible merger. It's moved to strike down net neutrality rules, showed no interest in limiting the massive AT&T-Time Warner merger, and is generally viewed as being unlikely to stop a Sprint-T-Mobile merger. "However, we have been clear all along that a deal with anyone will have to result in superior long-term value for T-Mobile's shareholders compared to our outstanding stand-alone performance and track record". Japan's SoftBank owns 85% of Sprint; the company's founder and CEO, Masayoshi Son, was reluctant past year to give up a large chunk of the carrier in any deal with T-Mobile.
T-Mobile's parent company is Germany's Deutsche Telekom. The company will need to spend as much as $6 billion annually in the next several fiscal years on upgrades, officials said in March.
Any pairing would also have widespread consumer implications. T-Mobile, for example, offers customers a free Netflix subscription under some plans.
Normally, such a mammoth merger would be subject to close scrutiny from the FCC, but the new-look FCC under Trump appointee (and former Verizon lawyer) Ajit Pai has shown no signs of wanting to be tough on big business. Previous talks to merge the No. 4 and No. 3 USA wireless providers collapsed in November.
