Paying attention, Verizon and AT&T? You might have a new monster of a mobile company (with lots of Android offerings) to deal with if Deutsche Telekom can successfully navigate a deal to purchase Sprint Nextel via its American arm, T-Mobile USA.
After rumors of the German mobile giant’s interest in swallowing up the on again, off again mobile carrier that is Sprint Nextel, shares of the Now Network Co. shot up 14 percent. The theoretical mobile entity, let’s call it T-Sprint, would move past AT&T to become the second largest mobile carrier in the States.
However, there are plenty of eyebrow raising questions to be sorted out before this rumored merger could take place. First, would this help or hurt T-Mobile (a la Sprint’s envelopment of Nextel)? More importantly, as things currently stand, Sprint and T-Mobile operate their own networks that rely, respectively, on entirely different technologies – so, how would the newly formed company integrate these independent platforms?
Finally, and it’s a BIG finally, is there even any possibility that US regulators would approve such a merger? For now, all of us who use (or have investments in) Sprint or T-Mobile will just have to sit back and wait to see if there are any merits to this rumor.
via Reuters
What bugs me most about it is that if DT bought up Sprint Nextel they would want to convert Sprint’s CDMA network to GSM, and in turn change out ALL current Sprint devices, almost certainly at the customer’s expense.
There is no way that DT would want to be running three totally distinct and non-compatible systems in just one country, their system of choice (and the “World Phone”) is GSM.
Oh, yeah, those of us on Sprint would probably lose not only our voice quality and speed advantages, but our better pricing, too.
It would be a tough job to get it past the US regulators, though.
(No, I don’t work for Sprint – never have.)
FYI y’all Sprint’s ticker symbol is S. Call your broker.
If you have been paying attention to sprint lately they are more concerned with their 4g wimax network, When Sprint and T-mobile Merge they will become Clearwire and will drop cdma/gsm and both adopt the 4g Technology and move forward from their
I do hope this happens. I look forward to the options it will open up.
i own a sprint store i wonder what will happen if this merge does go through… any hypothetical s?
I dont think this would work sprint has a better system then t-mobile. T-mobile dont work to well in my area or where i work and im pay less for my services