By David MacDonald L ewis and Clark. Grant and Sherman. Jordan and Pippen. Each of them is a much more interesting duo than T-Mobile and Sprint but only the latter is poised to take on AT&T and Verizon in the battle for wireless coverage supremacy in the US. This is the second time in less than a year that third-ranked wireless carrier T-Mobile and fourth-ranked Sprint have sat down to discuss a merger with the first round of talks breaking down in November, according to Fortune’s Aaron Pressman. In the second round of talks in early 2018, John Legere, T-Mobile’s CEO, invoked a great deal of “alarmist rhetoric” after a “leaked White House document about the next generation of wireless networks known as 5G,” Pressman explained. “The product of a National Security Council staffer’s worries that China would surpass the US in developing 5G technol- ogies, the paper proposed creating a government-built network dubbed The Eisenhower National Highway System for the Information Age.” The merger, still pending approval by a federal review by the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Com- mission, would help both telecom giants consolidate operations, cut costs, and in the case of Sprint, manage substantial debt.
It would also mean that the new company would carry approximately the same amount of wireless subscribers as ATT and Verizon.
Existing Sprint and T-Mobile customers are already weary of claims of upcoming improved service and infrastructure upgrades – they only envision increased fees.
According to the Associated Press, Sprint made a bid for T-Mobile three years which it dropped “following concerns by the Obama administration about wireless competition.”
The pending merger is worth USD 26.5 billion.
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SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • MAY 2018
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