Slashdot Mirror
SoftBank Is Willing To Cede Control of Sprint To Get T-Mobile Merger Done, Says Report (phonedog.com)
According to Reuters, SoftBank is willing to cede control of Sprint to make a T-Mobile-Sprint merger happen. The company controls 83 percent of Sprint, but it'd reportedly be willing to surrender control of Sprint and retain a minority stake in a merger with T-Mobile. PhoneDog reports: It's said that SoftBank is growing frustrated with Sprint's lack of major growth in the U.S. market, and so it wants to merge with T-Mobile in order to better compete with Verizon and ATT. No talks between SoftBank and Deutsche Telekom are currently happening because of the FCC's 600MHz spectrum auction that prevents collusion between competing companies. Once the auction ends in April, though, it's expected that SoftBank will approached Deutsche Telekom about a deal.
No, it comes down to why T-Mobile would freaking want Sprint and the baggage Sprint brings.
Sprint doesn't attract customers because, aside from bandwidth, they haven't been able to beat T-Mobile on anything enough for people to move to them. People generally with T-Mobile are actually happy with T-Mobile; they put up with the lack of bandwidth because T-Mobile is perceived as a better customer service and having better plans and policies company.
And T-Mobile needs to be careful. Sure, they'll get Sprint's customer base. But the whole softbank-Masa-Trump, right or wrong, will turn people off, esp the sort of customers T-Mobile tends to attract, esp with their independent style marketing. I don't say this simply because most people think Trump is a douche. T-Mobile experienced this when they were going to merge with AT&T--a lot of T-Mobile's customers were from AT&T, and AT&T was hell to them (AT&T is reportedly much improved since those times), and they bled customers simply on the announcement of the (later cancelled) merger. It doesn't help T-Mobile to absorb Sprint's customer base only to lose many of their own customers because the customers see the company going the wrong way. T-Mobile customers are known to want to be part of a "good" company and culture, something T-Mobile is perceived to have built the right way.
Even Masa by himself, having a sizeable minority stake, is dangerous. Anytime you have a known bigger businessman waiting in the wings with himself or a handpicked replacement ready to influence or internally strike, it's a bad setup. Besides the influence, he's got the capital to make an internal push once there's any hint of a slip up. (Think Apple vs. NeXT, Daimler vs. Chrysler, etc.)
If modern networks can share competing GSM derivate networks vs. Sprint's proprietary network, it'll bring T-Mobile some extra bandwidth and customers. But I just don't see why T-Mobile would bother with the baggage. There's too much risk of T-Mobile becoming more like Sprint than the other way around.