Big Telecom: Terms Set For Sprint To Buy T-Mobile For $32B 158
First time accepted submitter Randy Davis (3683081) writes 'A report from Forbes says that Sprint buying T-mobile for $32 billion is almost done. This will clearly rock the top two telecommunication companies in the U.S., Verizon and AT&T. The news report also said that T-mobile will give up 67% share in exchange of 15% share of the merged company. Officials of both Sprint and T-Mobile are confident that FCC will approve this deal since AT&T's $48.5 billion acquisition of DirecTV got approved.' One reason for that confidence: "The predominant feeling is that combined T-Mobile and Sprint will be able to offer greater competition to Verizon and AT&T , ranked first and second respectively in the U.S. market. It will also give Sprint greater might in the upcoming 600 megahertz spectrum auction, especially since part of it excludes both Verizon and AT&T from bidding."
InforWorld puts the potential price even higher, and points out that the deal could still fall apart.
InforWorld puts the potential price even higher, and points out that the deal could still fall apart.
Whoever wins, the customer loses (Score:3, Informative)
Also, AT&T's acquisition of DirecTV has not yet been approved. Huge factual error in the summary.
Re:Two different tech (Score:3, Informative)
Except, t-mobile doesn't have contracts any more and no intelligent person had them before anyway. While t-mobile's service leaves something to be desired and so too probably the customer service I'd not switch to another carrier as the alternatives are worse. AT&T is expensive as hell and had a cozy relationship with Apple (another evil operation). AT&T's benefit though is they are also on the GSM standard (which does mean they are my 2nd choice among major providers). Then comes Verizon. Well, just f'ing evil as hell. They lock you you, are unsupportive of GSM standards, etc. I never want to go back to Verizon. As far as Sprint goes I've always been weary... but I didn't know exactly why. One issue I have with Sprint though is that they aren't GSM based. I want my f'ing standards.
Re: Technical differences? (Score:1, Informative)
Sprint is CDMA. [wikipedia.org]
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
The T-mobile that sprint wants to buy is "T-Mobile US", the T-Mobile that is trading stakes is Deutsche Telekom and their T-Mobile International AG holding company.
Re:Anybody remeber Nextel? (Score:4, Informative)
Funny, because I can't see where you actually disagree with much of what I've said. You just have the tone of a stockholder, and want to spin it to the positive, and paint all their problems and failures as minor issues that'll be fixed ANY DAY NOW...
I specifically mentioned the: "Network Vision" upgrades by name. What about it?
Pretty strange to "completely" rebuild everything, and yet come back without LTE everywhere. And even their 2G/3G coverage hasn't been improved the slightest bit in any areas where I frequently have problems.
It's not"massive" at all. Two years, and only a minor expansion of LTE. All other providers, including T-Mobile, have FAR, FAR better LTE coverage, and are also expanding it FASTER.
No, that was a minor problem. The MAJOR problem was depth of coverage. Theirs sucks. Their Nextel/iDEN coverage was VASTLY better than their CDMA.
That doesn't change the fact that they missed a huge opportunity to use their existing WiMax to get a lot of "4G" coverage quickly, and wasted lots of money duplicating effort, building out LTE, first, in the same areas that had WiMax.