By 
T-Mobile’s parent company Deutsche Telekom has confirmed that talks are in progress to merge their US division with smaller regional carrier MetroPCS in an effort to bolster their position as the number four ranked service provider in the country. While discussions sound as though they are progressing in towards a final deal, DT said, “the conclusion of the transaction is still not certain.”
The German telecom company’s move to spur their US business comes a year after they hoped to exit the market altogether with a proposed $39 billion sale to AT&T. If and when the merger with MetroPCS is finalized, it should give the carrier the resources to challenge Sprint as the number three provider in the US, as well as offer a competitive edge over smaller competing networks such as Leap Wireless.
[via Reuters]
Here we go…
It does not involve Verizon, so the FCC will nullify this deal even if the 2 companies come to agreement. Sigh.
AT&T+T-mobile would have been around 140 million subscribers, about 50 million more than 2nd place Verizon with around 90 million(with Sprint at around 50million way back in 3rd and the new 4th place being Tracfone or Metro if you don’t count MVNOs, neither of which are past the 10 million mark).
This would be an excellent acquisition for T-Mobile due to MetroPCS’s established LTE network. If they can nab this they can expand their subscriber base, get some more LTE coverage in the deal and hopefully restructure some of the spectrum from both Metro and T-Mo to expand their existing coverage overall.
T-Mobile got hurt pretty bad when they were almost sold to AT&T. Many jumped ship worried they would become AT&T customers. This is a great acquisition for them to help build their network back up. We only have 3 major networks left, I really would like to see that number be 4 as competition helps fuel lower prices.
Doesn’t MetroPCS lease their LTE from Verizon or Sprint?
They had lte way before sprint, so not likely from Sprint. And doesn’t metro run on a cdma platform? Wouldn’t that hinder their network capabilities?
Metro leases cdma coverage from sprint to have nationwide coverage, but their lte is purely their own and the majority if not all of their native network is LTE now, since they cover very little. On top of that they announced rolling out VoLTE in the next 6 or 12 months I think. So their LTE can do voice and data, and I assume sms will be tacked in there as well. So their cdma network can be run as a legacy for acquired metropcs customers, but LTE is what tmobile will focus on, making phones that support their band of LTE as well as metro’s band. I very much doubt metro’s cdma coverage adds anything to tmobile’s coverage since metro is even more urban focused and covers limited cities. This could work out quite well for tmobile, though I don’t see it expanding their network coverage, which is a shame because they really need to work on that to play with the big boys.
Well, hopefully this move will bring them more customers and more income allowing them to expand their coverage.
As stated elsewhere, I would really love to see another wireless carrier come in and shake up the Big Three. If T-Mob can do that….more power to ’em.
AMEN!!!
VoLTE is already in use on the LG Motion. Hopefully if this does go through Metro will start getting GSM phones, not a fan of CDMA, too controlling…
After truly unlimited 4g..he’ll yeah. As soon as my contract with Verizon is up, if they haven’t given unlimited data (or something closer to the 5-8gb I use) for a decent price. I hope that this works for tmobile. They’ve really been coming up recently.
This would be the best to merge with better options for consumers I have att and I’m glad it failed that would have been a disaster for all super big monopoly with metro and tmo its a good.fit for.all
Noooooo! Sprint could have really used this merger.