Sprint and parent company SoftBank haven’t officially announced their intention to acquire T-Mobile yet, but about a dozen independently confirmed reports from various news organizations state that an announcement is imminent. Sprint is meeting with regulators, SoftBank is meeting with T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom, and banks reportedly tripped over themselves to offer financing for the deal.
While opinions are typically mixed on big M&A events like this, industry watchers seem to agree across the board that a Sprint/T-Mobile deal is an awful, awful idea. Some cite technical issues with integrating the two networks and some cite insurmountable regulatory hurdles as the reason this entire ordeal is a waste of time. While there’s plenty of coverage and analysis out there for those interested in learning more about the issues at hand, one industry watcher did a good job of laying out all the reasons this soon-to-be proposed merger is probably a terrible idea.
FierceWireless editor Phil Goldstein put together a clear and concise list of the six main reasons he sees Sprint’s potential T-Mobile buy as a bad idea. We’ve seen a number of the items on this list mentioned before — perhaps all of them — but Goldstein has done the best job we’ve seen to date of explaining everything succinctly.
This is a complex deal and the opposition stance isn’t as simple as “four major wireless carriers are better than three.” Goldstein covers issues like how a Sprint/T-Mobile merger would impact plans for wireless spectrum auctions, why the deal likely won’t be approved by U.S. regulators, and why the combined entity probably still wouldn’t have enough clout to really compete with Verizon and AT&T.
The article is a great read and it’s linked below in our source section.
