I must preface this and say by now, these rumors are starting to get old and frustrating. The wireless industry, which has of late seen more than its share of mergers and acquisitions, is again seeing T-Mobile take center stage in this, the latest round of merger talk. Reuters is reporting that Deutsche Telekom is seeking a partner for its U.S. branch, T-Mobile USA. Looking to shore up some help for its financial investment in US operations, possible partners again include MetroPCS and Clearwire. Surprisingly, AT&T is also mentioned as a possible partner, though I think the FCC would have some problems with one remaining GSM national carrier. A merger or acquisition of MetroPCS and Clearwire I think we can all get behind, anything that involves Magenta and the Death Star makes me want to seek out the nearest trash can. Not to be left out of the Reuters article is the mention of a Sprint takeover, which the author mentions is no longer under consideration by Deutsche Telekom, thank goodness.

While declining to comment on the Reuters article, Deutsche Telekom COO Hamid Akhavan speaking at the FT World Telecoms Conference did speak about the difficult situation in the United States.

“We have had some heavy headwinds … but we are quite optimistic that this trend can be reversed,” he said, attributing the problems to a delay in the group securing third generation networks and the population of Apple’s (AAPL.O) iPhone on a rival network.

According to the German newspaper cited by the Reuters article, Deutsche Telekom is still in the very early stages of searching for a partner but had abandoned other “potential strategies to bolster its U.S. business.”

So here were go again, more merger talk, what say you?’

Reuters