We’ve been hearing since December, that Softbank/Sprint, may be looking to purchase T-Mobile and merge the two carriers. Although, we’ve also heard from both the Department of Justice and the FCC that they do not want to see this merger, and they’ve expressed their concern to both Sprint CEO Dan Hesse and their Chairman Masayoshi Son. Son refused to comment on the scepticism we reported on earlier this week. And the fact that Sprint may be back peddling from buying T-Mobile.
According to both Hesse and Son, a merger between Sprint and T-Mobile, respectively the #3 and #4 carriers in the US, would help fight the duopoly between AT&T and Verizon. “I think that there is a very big gap between teh two strong companies and the two weak ones. I plan to strengthen the position of the No. 3 company” said Masayoshi Son. Now that’s great to hear. I’d love to see Sprint be able to compete with Verizon and AT&T, especially with their unlimited plan. But they have a long way to go before they get there, and so does T-Mobile.
On Tuesday, Sprint announced their financials for Q4 which did exceed expectations, but they did still post a pretty big loss. They added around 600,000 new customers, primarily in the prepaid side of their business. But they did also post a huge $1 billion operating loss. Which is hard to fathom, especially when you’re at 53.9 million customers and you’ve never had that many before. I’m hoping that means Sprint and Softbank sunk a ton of money into their network in Q4 and we’ll see that in action very soon. But who knows.
At this point, we aren’t sure if there is still going to be a T-Mobile/Sprint merger or not, or if they are even going to try it. But I’m pretty certain that the FCC and DOJ would block it since they are already concerned over just the idea of it. What do the rest of you think?