Sprint and T-Mobile have announced that they will merge

[THeEmpire.01]

Sprint and T-Mobile have announced that they will merge*

*IT HASN'T BEEN APPROVED YET

The new company will be called T-Mobile 

https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/29/17298904/sprint-and-t-mobile-merger

 

Quote

The number of major wireless carriers in the United States could shrink from four to three. Sprint and T-Mobile have announced that they intend to merge. The merger will need to be approved by regulators and the company’s shareholders. 

The combined company will be based in Bellevue Washington and will be called T-Mobile. Current T-Mobile CEO John Legere will run the combined company, while T-Mobile COO Mike Sievert will become the new company’s COO and President. T-Mobile’s majority owner Deutsche Telekom will hold a 42 percent stake in the company, while Sprint majority owner SoftBank will hold 27 percent, with public stakeholders holding the rest. Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son will sit on the combined company’s board. 

The companies say that by combining, they’ll be able to lower prices and take advantage of “greater economies of scale”. The two companies have trailed their larger rivals, AT&T and Verizon, and the merger between Sprint and T-Mobile will help give them a boost as they begin to deploy their next-generation 5G network across the country. The combined company will have nearly 100 million customers. 

The merger comes after years of on-and-off talks between the two companies. Sprint had been prepared to buy T-Mobile in 2014, but those talks didn’t go anywhere. The two companies resumed those talks in May of last year, came close in September to reaching a deal, only for Sprint to call them off in October. T-Mobile then made its own offer in November, but that quickly collapsed as well. The talks resumed again earlier this month, and on Friday, CNBC said that the two were closing in on a merger to the tune of $26 billion. 

While the two companies have agreed to merge, they still have an uphill battle before that actually happens: the deal will have to be cleared by regulators, who might not be happy about the smaller number of carriers. In 2011, a planned merger between AT&T and T-Mobile attracted fierce resistance from regulators, and was ultimately canceled.

I think that this is exciting, scary, and just plain weird. In the video both of the companies discuss that the merger will generate competition and will accelerate the 5G race. I am excited if this means that 5G can be a reality sooner. But if this means a worse option for consumers then Im am genuinely worried as two what will happen. What do you guys think of this? How do you fell this will impact the market? And do you think it will be approved?

 

[AlTech]

Yeah no lol, the FTC will never allow it .

[BuckGup]

They both are smaller then AT&T and Verizon but I wouldn't believe any ISP or cellphone company says. All they care about is money

[Lurick]

I don't think this is going to bode well for the average consumer if it goes through. There will be just three companies that basically own all the consumer cellular networks in the US if these two merge.

[Trixanity]

I feel like American consumers are stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand you're losing a carrier and there are therefore fewer choices. On the other hand having two companies that are trailing that far behind isn't good; something's gotta change.

 

I wonder if the merger will actually be approved. The current political climate would make it very possible; whereas I imagine just a few years ago it would have been inconceivable.

[LienusLateTips]

i feel like i've seen this news before somewhere like a few days ago.

[DrMacintosh]

I have Sprint, I like Sprint as a company and I like their prices, what I don't like is their coverage. 

 

That is all the input I have lol.  

[Drak3]

I know T-Mobile has shit coverage, but taking over a company with even shittier coverage isn't going to help, especially when they use a completely different network.

 

But at least now Google won't bombard me with their false advertising anymore.

[bobhays]

1 hour ago, Drak3 said:

I know T-Mobile has shit coverage, but taking over a company with even shittier coverage isn't going to help, especially when they use a completely different network.

 

But at least now Google won't bombard me with their false advertising anymore.

Isn't adding a company that uses a completely different network the best way to improve coverage? If they had the same network then they would have the same coverage after combining.

 

EDIT: realized you were probably talking about GSM and CDMA, and not network coverage.

[linkboy]

14 hours ago, Lurick said:

I don't think this is going to bode well for the average consumer if it goes through. There will be just three companies that basically own all the consumer cellular networks in the US if these two merge.

For a lot of people though, that's already how it is. Sprint has little to no coverage outside of major cities (especially the further west you go). T-Mobile is fairing a bit better in that regard (they've spent a lot in the last year focusing on states like South Dakota, Montana and Wyoming), but they're still lagging far behind Verizon and AT&T in rural areas.

 

T-Mobile needs more spectrum to build their network out in more rural areas (which Sprint has) and Sprint needs money (which T-Mobile has).

 

Sprint, while not as bad financially as they used to be, is still costing Softbank a lot of money (which is why Softbank has been shopping Sprint around). There's a good chance Sprint goes out of business and we're in this exact same boat.

 

 

 

 

[mynameisjuan]

14 hours ago, Lurick said:

I don't think this is going to bode well for the average consumer if it goes through. There will be just three companies that basically own all the consumer cellular networks in the US if these two merge.

Meh, does really matter at this point. They are already fucking us pretty hard with current prices.

[Cindex]

I, for one, think this isn't such a bad idea.  I don't know if it will go through, or how it will work out, but I personally think their plan is quite obvious with all the talk of 5G.  They're going to pool their resources to get a wider coverage 5G network before anyone else, or at least try to.  That'll really push the envelope for Verizon and AT&T to do some network upgrades.

 

Although personally I think the best thing would be making dual network capable phones (My Moto E4 plus comes to mind.....) capable of running on both of their networks.  I can hook to Sprint (like I am now, terrible coverage but decent speeds in towns, random coverage out of town) and I can hook to T-Mobile (definitely better around here, but still spotty in between towns) but I have to carry two phones right now to do it. They could compete with Google Fi (sp?) on a country wide scale.

 

Just $0.02

[Commodus]

10 hours ago, Drak3 said:

I know T-Mobile has shit coverage, but taking over a company with even shittier coverage isn't going to help, especially when they use a completely different network.

 

But at least now Google won't bombard me with their false advertising anymore.

It should actually help a lot, even though Sprint uses CDMA for calls.

 

More likely than not, T-Mobile would consolidate everything into one network over time.  You'd actually get much better coverage, since there would be gobs of usable frequencies at both the high and low ends of the spectrum.  The catch, of course, is that it'll likely take a few years (assuming the merger goes forward) for both the network and devices to support this.

[Guest The Viking]

ahahah americans giving us lessons of competition then are fine with having only 3 mobile operators. 

 

Go ahead chaps, go ahead, I'll be here laughing in a few years when you have 2 choices and it's between "bad" and "very bad". 

 

seriously some days...

 

if they merge, what they'll do is the usual:

• close down shops/offices, reduce staff overall
• increase prices using some crappy excuse of "oh well we improving network coverage"
• end up not doing much and leaving the same coverage or worse than before at higher price
• make tons $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$, the consumer will be locked anyway as there won't be another company to go to.

[michaelocarroll007]

18 hours ago, Trixanity said:

I feel like American consumers are stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand you're losing a carrier and there are therefore fewer choices. On the other hand having two companies that are trailing that far behind isn't good; something's gotta change.

 

I wonder if the merger will actually be approved. The current political climate would make it very possible; whereas I imagine just a few years ago it would have been inconceivable.

Tmobiles been growing at crazy rates and Killing it over the last 5 years. ATT 2nd Largest tried to buy Tmobile when it was 4th largest ( Last Place)  it was Stopped as it is anti competitive.  Ever sense then Tmobile went full throttle gowing customers and service. and IMO basically proving denying that merger was a great thing in the cellular space and Proved that the smaller companies can win also if they do it right.  19 straight quarters of Successes is crazy 

 

 

Total net customer additions were 1.9 million in Q4 2017, bringing our total customer count to 72.6 million. Q4 2017 marked the 19th straight quarter in which T-Mobile generated more than 1 million total net customer additions. For full-year 2017, total net customer additions were 5.7 million, marking the fourth year in a row of more than 5 million total net additions.

 

Source 

https://newsroom.t-mobile.com/news-and-blogs/tmus-q4-2017-earnings.htm 

[Trixanity]

2 hours ago, michaelocarroll007 said:

Tmobiles been growing at crazy rates and Killing it over the last 5 years. ATT 2nd Largest tried to buy Tmobile when it was 4th largest ( Last Place)  it was Stopped as it is anti competitive.  Ever sense then Tmobile went full throttle gowing customers and service. and IMO basically proving denying that merger was a great thing in the cellular space and Proved that the smaller companies can win also if they do it right.  19 straight quarters of Successes is crazy 

 

 

Total net customer additions were 1.9 million in Q4 2017, bringing our total customer count to 72.6 million. Q4 2017 marked the 19th straight quarter in which T-Mobile generated more than 1 million total net customer additions. For full-year 2017, total net customer additions were 5.7 million, marking the fourth year in a row of more than 5 million total net additions.

 

Source 

https://newsroom.t-mobile.com/news-and-blogs/tmus-q4-2017-earnings.htm 

I know they're growing but at some point they need to invest a lot of money in infrastructure. Both existing and new. Especially the latter if they want to expand coverage. 

 

Obviously more customers equals more money but they also need to attract those customers. It isn't enough to just be available. They need to be better in one or more ways to reel people in and that too can cost money. 

 

So ultimately that's a lot of money that need to spent. A merger may be a quick but probably expensive way to gain access to customers and infrastructure. In the case of Sprint, CDMA needs to be phased out in favor of LTE or even 5G. That's also an expense but Sprint has towers and spectrum so that's something at least.

 

With that being said I think Sprint needs TMobile more than the other way around. A lot more. That's why they're willing to give so much ground. SoftBank wants a return on their investment for once.

[michaelocarroll007]

On 4/30/2018 at 3:15 PM, Trixanity said:

I know they're growing but at some point they need to invest a lot of money in infrastructure. Both existing and new. Especially the latter if they want to expand coverage. 

 

Obviously more customers equals more money but they also need to attract those customers. It isn't enough to just be available. They need to be better in one or more ways to reel people in and that too can cost money. 

 

So ultimately that's a lot of money that need to spent. A merger may be a quick but probably expensive way to gain access to customers and infrastructure. In the case of Sprint, CDMA needs to be phased out in favor of LTE or even 5G. That's also an expense but Sprint has towers and spectrum so that's something at least.

 

With that being said I think Sprint needs TMobile more than the other way around. A lot more. That's why they're willing to give so much ground. SoftBank wants a return on their investment for once.

Tmobile has also Grown there Towers & Spectrum a Great amount over the last 5 years. 

 

Id agree Sprint Needs tmobile way more then Tmobile needs sprint. But Tmobile did have less customers and Worse service then sprint now it has 20 Million more customers and a ton of better and way faster coverage then sprint. Though still trail ATT and Verizon about half on the customer count.