Update 2/11/20: A U.S. District court judge has now approved this merger. Deal is expected to close as early as April 1st, 2020. A federal judge still needs to sign off on the deal, as does California’s utility board.
Original post: T-Mobile & Sprint have finally announced a formal plan to merge. The deal combines Sprint (valued at $26 billion) and T-Mobile (valued at $55 billion). If the deal is completed they will trade under the name T-Mobile and T-Mobile president and CEO John Legere is expected to run the company. There will be significant anti-trust scrutiny as the combined company will be the second largest wireless provider (looks like they will still be #3) with 127.5 million cell phone customers. In 2011 the government prevented an AT&T and T-Mobile deal due to anti-trust concerns.
T-Mobile CEO John Legere stated they would be investing $40 billion on the new network in the first three years after the deal closes, with a focus on building out the 5G network. If successful the deal is expected to be completed by late 2019. Readers of this site might care about this purposed merger for two main reasons: you might be a customer of sprint due to the free unlimited plan for one year, you might be a T-Mobile customer that takes advantage of T-Mobile Tuesdays.
What does everyone think about how Sprint’s MVNOs (ie Tello, RPM, etc.) will be affected by this?
Sprint will be bankrupt if the merger falls through. Its CEO isn’t trusted by investors.
I had been holding shares since Sept.19 and made a great profit when the approval went through. Well worth the wait.
Interesting. Why does one random judge gets to decide on something as huge as this ? I sure hope my beloved Golden State will block this, or at least delay by a couple of decades)
Sprint wasn’t going to last They were on borrowed time. The taxaholic state will let this pass otherwise Att and Verizon will really put the screws to you.
Also it was already approved by the Feds, far more than, as you say, some random judge.
Yes, because California has the right to tell everyone else what they can do. :/
Why do you want it blocked?
love tmobile. Have 6 lines all unlimited data with 10gb hotspot each and paying $125 after tax after all promotions.
T-Mobile is good for people even if it doesn’t have good coverage in one’s area – it’s easy to get a good looking number on a prepaid plan, since one gets to choose, and then one can port over the number.
I held Sprint for a long time (averaging down several times) waiting for this day
Huge mergers like this never benefits the consumers. Also there are going to be layoffs and that also sucks for the employees. Whether service improves for sprint or Tmobile customers remain to be seen.
A great day to have a significant holding in Sprint’s stock… +75%
Hope it doesn’t screw up Google Fi.
I still have a credit of over hundred dollars that I got in January 2019 on Google Fi. I love its (seasonal) cheap phones & international roaming.
If this doesn’t go through Sprint becomes much more attractive because the deal they made is that if merger falls apart sprint customers get free roaming on TMO, effectively giving sprint customers both networks. I’d jump ship to sprint for that.