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T-Mobile, Sprint Close To Agreeing Deal Terms (reuters.com)
From a report: T-Mobile US is close to agreeing tentative terms on a deal to merge with peer Sprint Corp, people familiar with the matter said on Friday, a major breakthrough in efforts to merge the third and fourth largest U.S. wireless carriers. The development follows more than four months of on-and-off talks this year between T-Mobile and Sprint, and comes as the U.S. telecommunications sector seeks ways to tackle investments in 5G technology that will greatly enhance wireless data transfer speeds.
This new company could be called American Telephone & Text.
The reporting I read earlier today suggested that the positions have been swapped at the table, so T-Mobile's owner (Deutsche Telekom) would be the majority shareholder in a 60-40 merger with Sprint (owned by SoftBank). Likewise, the current T-Mobile CEO who has been leading a successful comeback for the carrier would be the CEO of the merged company.
I imagine they will phase out the CDMA network. Most other CDMA carriers are dropping it. Verizon is slated to turn off theirs in 2019 and several Canadian carriers are moving away from it as well.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Sprint has a lot of spectrum that it isn't using because it can't afford to. After that, take the total number of subscribers from Sprint and T-Mobile and when it's still less than AT&T or Verizon there's so much spectrum left that T-Mobile could offer (very) much better coverage than either of the two titans.
When a new spectrum auction comes up, T-Mobile will not need to bid and therefore not raise rates to cover cost. Also, with all that new spectrum, 5G will be more realizable.
Finally, T-Moblie could start offering home broadband like Comcast or Charter. There would be lower caps than those but it's still a much more viable option at 5G.