Is the “Un-carrier” unsellable? Bloomberg reports that French carrier Illiad has now given up its bid to buy T-Mobile from parent company Deutsche Telekom, thus making it the second carrier to fail at acquiring the scrappy mobile operator this year. Apparently Illiad decided to withdraw its bid after upping its offer to $36 per share to acquire 67% of the company, which was a boost from the $33 per share it offered to acquire 56.6% of the company this past summer. Despite this higher offer, Deutsche Telekom apparently remained uninterested in the proposal.
RELATED: The Sprint-T-Mobile merger is dead for good
Earlier this year Sprint withdrew its bid to buy T-Mobile for $32 billion after U.S. regulators repeatedly signaled that they were cool to the deal, which they thought would significantly reduce competition in the American wireless industry. Before that, of course, AT&T similarly tried to take T-Mobile off of DT’s hands and similarly got shot down by the FCC.
What happens to T-Mobile from here is anyone’s guess. The “Un-carrier” has succeeded in attracting more customers and is adding subscribers at a heady clip. Despite this, DT really does seem eager to unload it, although it clearly won’t accept selling it for less than it thinks T-Mobile is worth. At the very least, we can confidently say that we don’t envision Verizon trying to buy up T-Mobile anytime soon.
