T-Mobile has spent the last few years growing at an impressive pace, with rumors of a possible merger with Sprint popping up every now and then. However, a recent conference in Atlanta saw T-Mobile’s Chief Technology Officer Neville Ray dismiss the possibility of merging with the fourth largest mobile service provider in the United States. Looking at its far more commanding stature in the wireless world, analysts have been pairing T-Mobile with various entities for some time now, and Sprint was one of the most frequently named companies in this context. For his part, Ray commented that T-Mobile may not actively be pursuing a merger with Sprint for now, but would consider such an option in the future if it looked like it would feasibly be in the best interests of both parties. He also noted that Sprint in its current form cannot compete with T-Mobile on the network front, which means that a merger would benefit Sprint customers more than T-Mobile customers.
While Ray said he’s currently optimistic about the future of T-Mobile, he did not entirely dismiss the possibility of a merger to help bring things to a new level and even cited T-Mobile’s previous merger with MetroPCS as an example of a successful merger. According to Ray, T-Mobile was able to integrate MetroPCS’ customers and backend in a quick and efficient manner, and if the opportunity to merge with another carrier were to come up, they would know what they were doing.
Later in the same speech, Ray touched on the current regulatory environment in the United States by saying it was open to zero-rating and incentivized unlimited data plans, though the fact remains that the new FCC under Ajit Pai rules in a much more lenient manner than it did under Tom Wheeler. The previous FCC was cracking down on monopolies in the tech and telecom sectors and was rather aggressive in terms of enacting net neutrality rules. Ray’s sentiment is actually echoed quite clearly by recent events such as the FCC’s decision to simply not review a proposed merger between AT&T and Time Warner, letting the two giants put their resources together with little oversight.