A report by The Wall Street Journal notes that Sprint may be readying a bid for T-Mobile. The company, which was recently bought out by Japanese carrier Softbank, is said to be working on a proposal to purchase T-Mobile outright from Deutsche Telekom. If successful, that would give the US three major carriers, and place Sprint in an immediate position of prominence.


The bid is said to be coming in the first half of next year, and could be worth upwards of $20 billion. Oddly, that’s roughly the amount Softbank bought Sprint for, merely one year ago. It’s also a number that makes little sense, considering that AT&T tried to buy T-Mobile for upwards of $40 million two years ago, which was shot down by regulatory officials.

The report also notes that Deutsche Telekom is attempting to exit the US market, and is willing to give up their 67% stake in T-Mobile altogether. With an 80% stake in Sprint, Softbank was always keen to grow their presence in the US, but understood it couldn’t end with that deal. If a merger were to happen between the two, it would also present the largest postpaid customer base in the US.

There are plenty of hurdles, though. T-Mobile is on an upswing, and growing their business rapidly. Their Un-carrier approach has proven wildly successful, drawing customers for the first time in a long time. Sprint is also a CDMA carrier, while T-Mobile operates on the more open GSM/HSPA technology. We also can’t see an offer for literally half the money T-Mobile commanded two years ago happening, especially considering their recent success, but stranger things have happened.

20 COMMENTS

  2. I hope this doesn’t happen… If T-Mobile got bought out by Sprint it would probably make the service worse as they would have to switch everything over, plus I like T-Mobile

  3. Let’s not forget that sprint has the worst track record on earth when it comes to
    buyouts. No one will ever forget the Nextel fallout. In fact that combined with the
    Nascar contact bleed them dry resulting in them taking the softball money.
    What is even more concerning is that more than 75% of the DOD as well as other
    agencies data and cell connectivity runs over sprints data lines. If there was ever a Privacy and security concerns this would be it.. All of that data would now be owned by a foreign entry.

  5. They were so against companies trying to buy Tmo. Now look at this shit, Tmo should turn them down down. Though the MetroPCS thing the best ever the ATT merge would’ve been the way to go.

    • they weren’t against companies trying to buy t-mobile, they were against duopoly. they didn’t want to give at&t that much control of the cellular market.

      • The way I see it Sprint wanted Tmo because Tmo wanted out and Sprint was getting crushed no more bullet proof Evos, telling everybody they got 4G LTE which is just an amped up 4G WiMaxx which was just a high end 3G(that’s why it didn’t work right at first), unlimited plan had to catches to it. Then ATT(a bigger dollar) had interest in Tmo but VZ(a bigger dollar) didn’t want Sprint. So then Duoply was wrong and they cried about the Att/Tmo thing and begged for it to stop. Then Tmo started crushing Sprint with real 4G LTE, real Unlimited Plans, snatching up MetroPCS the first Real 4G LTE(though they still drop calls) since Sprint had Virgin and Boost sorry asses. Now that’s 3 crushings. Then Sprint sprinted to Japan. But Tmo just want out if they can’t change the game and Sprint knows this. So back to the original plan now. Its cool to buy Tmo as long as its Sprint because Sprint still wanna play.

      • most people have no idea why sprint went with wimax………sprint has real lte and they also have td-lte, its not fake, the reason sprint wants t-mobile is for buying power, more phone sales means better deals on phones ect.

      • sprints has much larger coverage then t-mobile ….and sprint is light years better here in Chicago, there was a period were the service tot really bad due to the upgrade of the net work but the wait was so worth it now the service is even better and data is super fast on the all new network

  6. “The bid is said to be coming in the first half of next year, and could be worth upwards of $20 billion” and “AT&T tried to buy T-Mobile for upwards of $40 million two years ago,”
    Hmmmm, something doesn’t add up.

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