We know that the two carriers are “close” to matching on terms, and they could have a settlement ready by late October. There are the normal signs the tipsters say there’s yet a future thing could fall apart, but it’s necessary that Sprint and T-Mobile are certainly confident quite that there’s a timeline.
Sprint and T-Mobile aren’t speaking about the reported leak, but both sides have fallen hints that they were acknowledging a merger. For instance, Sprint chief Marcelo Claure said in August that a letter on consolidation talks would appear in the “near future,” while SoftBank’s own CEO has been expecting for a while.
While negotiations have reportedly taken place for years, it’s considered the two have returned to the negotiating table both due to play and the country’s current leadership. While T-Mobile has been fiercely successful in bringing subscribers, it had to spend a lot of money to get there a Sprint merger would give it a large base without having to lift a finger. Sprint, while only just returned to profit in part by extensive cost-cutting and is still trying to add significantly more users. And both businesses are no doubt hoping that the looser antitrust settlement of the current US regime will help them merge where they would have been shot down under early governments. They may see this as a now-or-never circumstance where it’s better to try for a merger than lose their big chance at confronting AT&T and Verizon.
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