T-Mobile’s name has popped up as part of several possible mergers, including some with Sprint. None of those deals have actually panned out, but Sprint’s owner is holding out hope that one will.
Sources say that Masayoshi Son, CEO of SoftBank, wants to merge Sprint with T-Mobile. SoftBank currently owns more than 80 percent of Sprint. Bloomberg’s sources explain that if Son feels that the next head of the FCC would be responsive to a Sprint-T-Mo deal, Son would probably try to get a merger done.
Son was interested in buying T-Mobile and merging them with Sprint back in 2014. However, when U.S. Justice Department and FCC expressed concerns about such a deal, Son decided to abandon the effort.
There aren’t any deal talks currently happening between Sprint and T-Mobile because of the 600MHz spectrum auction’s quiet period.
T-Mobile surpassed Sprint to become the number three carrier in the U.S. right around one year ago. While Sprint has been putting up better numbers recently than it had been, it’s not matching the performance that T-Mo has had lately. Son would likely point to this situation if he were to try another Sprint-T-Mobile merger and suggest that a combined Sprint-Mo would be better competition to AT&T and Verizon than Sprint and T-Mobile would be separately.
Source: Bloomberg