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Sprint and T-Mobile Revisit Merger Talks

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Sprint and T-Mobile have once again entered into talks over a potential merger, reports The Wall Street Journal.

The revitalization of the discussion comes just five months after the two companies officially called off plans for a merger following an inability to reach "mutually agreeable terms."

sprinttmobile.jpg

At the time, Sprint parent company SoftBank was not satisfied with the deal because of ownership terms, with SoftBank concerned about losing control of the combined company after T-Mobile parent company Deutsche Telekom requested a controlling stake.

The current discussions are said to be in a preliminary stage, and it's not clear what terms the two companies are considering, nor if the current administration would allow the deal to go through. Talks between the two companies have fallen apart several times before, and the same could be true of this round of discussions.

Should T-Mobile and Sprint be able to establish a satisfactory deal, the combined company would have close to 100 million customers, putting it ahead of AT&T and just behind Verizon.

When the last deal fell through in November of 2017, Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure said it was best for Sprint to move forward on its own and that the company would be "accelerating significant investments" to ensure its continued growth.

T-Mobile CEO John Legere said that a deal between T-Mobile and Sprint would need to "result in superior long-term value for T-Mobile's shareholders," and that T-Mobile would continue to disrupt the industry.

Article Link: Sprint and T-Mobile Revisit Merger Talks
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2018/04/10/sprint-tmobile-merger-talks/
I haven’t been keeping track, but haven’t they had “merger talks” every year for the past 5-7 years?
 
You would think that they would have learned from the past.. sprint operating 2 different 4G networks plus the CDMA network is ultimately what killed them.
Now T-Mobile is thinking about buying a CDMA network.. although LTE should make it easier.. but it’s still a lot of networks to run and ultimately hurt the customer
 
Sometimes I miss Nextel... their service was vastly superior to anyone else before the smartphone era. Of course they couldn't adapt and so Sprint picked them up... but Sprint is a trainwreck of a company that couldn't handle Nextel (all they ended up with was a really expensive customer list and billions of dollars worth of obsolete hardware).

I left Nextel (then under Sprint) for AT&T in 2010 when I bought my first iPhone (4). I briefly went to Sprint 2 years ago because it was half the price of AT&T at the time, but the service was so horrible I went back to AT&T just 3 months later.

I personally don't care what happens with this merger; I'm guessing now that Softbank just wants to cut their losses and I don't see the surviving T-Mobile staying ahead of AT&T for very long, if at all.
 
12th time is a charm? Sorry, I don't see it happening. It certainly indicates how desperate both companies are that they keep trying again and again and again to make this happen.
 
I'm sure if they do agree, government officials will step in to scrutinize the details and possibly block it. I'm on T-Mobile myself, and I dread the Sprint network. So this will be interesting....
 
Unless T-Mobile is 100% in control... no thanks.
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WarHeadz said:
This shouldn’t be allowed.
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Why? T-Mobile is already pushing AT&T and Verizon to do things they don't want to do. If T-Mobile becomes bigger, they have even more power to make things better.
 
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gigapocket1 said:
You would think that they would have learned from the past.. sprint operating 2 different 4G networks plus the CDMA network is ultimately what killed them.
Now T-Mobile is thinking about buying a CDMA network.. although LTE should make it easier.. but it’s still a lot of networks to run and ultimately hurt the customer
Click to expand...
It has happened before, T-Mobile picked up MetroPCS, which was a CDMA network at the time.
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blcamp said:
I personally don't care what happens with this merger; I'm guessing now that Softbank just wants to cut their losses and I don't see the surviving T-Mobile staying ahead of AT&T for very long, if at all.
Click to expand...
I disagree, AT&T's coverage has become very bad in the Southern California area with tons of dropped calls and their customer service has become worse than Sprint's. Now that is on the business end, I cannot say for sure about the customer service on the consumer end of the service.
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BasicGreatGuy said:
It isn’t going to happen. Sprint can’t even manage their own company, and they will still want control.

I left Sprint for several reasons and I am not looking to go back.
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Exactly, T-Mobile needs to think long and hard about this.....wait, no they don't, they need to RUN away from Sprint as FAST as possible.
 
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As long as the merger doesn’t negatively affect current T-Mobile subscribers like myself, I’m somewhat okay with it. Of course, having 4 competing wireless carriers is better than 3. T-Mobile has evolved into a good to great (depending on where you live), cheaper, more European-like option for a lot of us and we don’t want the company to regress due to being overburdened with Sprint’s baggage.
 
cmwade77 said:
Exactly, T-Mobile needs to think long and hard about this.....wait, no they don't, they need to RUN away from Sprint as FAST as possible.
Click to expand...

Yep, as a southern californianer...? hmm. Anyway, as someone in Southern California - Verizon is king here. I've seen tons of AT&T customers switch over because of terrible service (coworkers, family, classmates, etc...).
 
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dampfnudel said:
Of course, having 4 competing wireless carriers is better than 3.
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Come on... is Sprint really competition for companies like Verizon and AT&T?

I mean... I know they're technically competition simply because they exist.

I see plenty of commercials for Sprint with the narrative that people are spending too much money on Verizon.

But it's obviously not working since Sprint is (still) a distant 4th place.
 
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Michael Scrip said:
Come on... is Sprint really competition for companies like Verizon and AT&T?

I mean... I know they're technically competition simply because they exist.

I see plenty of commercials for Sprint with the narrative that people are spending too much money on Verizon.

But it's obviously not working since Sprint is (still) a distant 4th place.
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I’m sure T-Mobile has a goal to reach 100 million+ subscribers and maybe make it into 2nd place. Sprint may be the only option for this to happen. So maybe three strong carriers would be good enough?
 
WarHeadz said:
You really don’t see how less competition in a market with 4 major players isn’t a problem?
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Yes... in general... more competition is better.

But what if one of those major players is actually a mediocre player with not much going for it?

Has Sprint really made any waves in the US phone market lately?

They might be better off teaming up with T-Mobile. At least they'd be a bigger combined player.

And you still have choice outside the major cell phone providers. There are a dozen MVNOs that offer similar services at competitive prices. You don't have to use any of the major players if you don't want to.

Even if it went from 4 players to 3 players... it's still a better competitive market than, let's say, the broadband internet market.
 
Michael Scrip said:
Yes... in general... more competition is better.

But what if one of those major players is actually a mediocre player with not much going for it?

Has Sprint really made any waves in the US phone market lately?

They might be better off teaming up with T-Mobile. At least they'd be a bigger combined player.

And you still have choice outside the major cell phone providers. There are a dozen MVNOs that offer similar services at competitive prices. You don't have to use any of the major players if you don't want to.

Even if it went from 4 players to 3 players... it's still a better competitive market than, let's say, the broadband internet market.
Click to expand...
Yeah, 3 strong carriers may be better than the current situation. Of course, there better not be any more mergers.
 
T-Mobile is amazing and Sprint is a joke. I'm pretty apprehensive about this idea, every single time it pops back up.
 
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Always found it interesting when a former coworker on Sprint laughed at me for paying $20-$30/mo more for my plan, then begged me to do a hotspot whenever we went out cuz he never had data. <cough> Ingress Players on Sprint or T-Mobile were often begging Verizon customers for hotspots. With my employer discount, Sprint/T-Mobile don't offer that much of a savings difference.
 
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