Tuesday, September 15, 2009

T-Mobile Considers Buying Sprint

In a story that appeared in the Sunday Daily Telegraph, European cellular provider Deutsche Telekom, the parent of T-Mobile, is talking to their bankers about the possible purchase of Sprint/Nextel. We were hoping for a savior for Sprint and Nextel riding in on a horse of a different color. This means, if successful, the number 3 and 4 wireless companies in the US will combine to become the number 1 or number 2 carrier, and we lose another competitor.

Of course there will be a few kinks to iron out, like differing (GSM, CDMA, & iDEN) technologies and potential Department of Justice considerations. But it seems to be the next step down the inevitable path of consolidation, and eventual price increases. And the 'what-ifs': will they stay separate, switch to all-GSM or CDMA, and will Nextel be sent packing?

Sprint needs the help since they can't seem to fix their own problems, but it's sad it may come at the expense of yet another major wireless player in the US. Hello Cricket...hello MetroPCS, you guys ready to move up?

2 comments:

Andrew said...

I'm all for a combined T-Mobile/Sprint company as long as they keep Nextel iDEN services afloat. Though outdated, there are still a significant number of people like myself who need direct connect for their work and leisure as well. Verizon and AT&T are plain nasty. They need some real competition.

William said...

I'd like to see T-Mobile and Sprint/Nextel combine. Both sides would be able to vastly improve their coverage, and offer a better variety of service, plans, and devices. As for their networking, I would imagine the company would start developing a nationwide LTE network and leave things status quo until that would be ready to go. On the subject of Nextel, maybe T-Mobile would do what Sprint for some reason has blatantly failed to do: include 3G data or wifi on all new IDEN phones. People complain that IDEN is old and outdated, but technically speaking, so is CDMA. The diffrence is that Sprint's CDMA phones come with 3G radios. If they did the same for Nextel, Sprint would gain a substantial amount of subscribers. Maybe T-Mobile would see that.