T-Mobile has confirmed that its Sprint merger talks have ended, publicly announcing the news on its Newsroom blog that it would no longer be continuing with discussions about the proposed merger. More specifically, this was a joint announcement from both T-Mobile and Sprint, showcasing that both companies had come to the decision together and that this is to be the best course of action moving forward, as both feel that the best step to take is to further improve their own networks and go about things the way they each have been, which is individually.
According to the announcement, T-Mobile and Sprint weren’t able to come to a mutual agreement on terms of the merger, with Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure highlighting the fact that Sprint is aware that it “has significant assets” and will be working towards continued future growth of the company through substantial network investments. For T-Mobile’s part, its CEO John Legere drew attention to requiring that any investment regardless of who it would be with would need to end up being a “superior long-term value” for the company shareholders, more so than what T-Mobile is already doing for them in its current state of successfully doing things by itself. Based on the statements from both CEOs, both companies may have felt that they weren’t going to be receiving a fair part of the deal.
The merger talks officially ending really shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. Even though T-Mobile was reportedly coming up with a new proposal for Sprint in the discussion as of just the last couple of days, a little further back it was made public that Softbank wasn’t happy with the proposed ownership structure should the merger have gone through, and that it wouldn’t concede control and was deciding to drop out of merger discussions. With the talks of a merger between the third and fourth largest wireless carriers in the U.S. now out of the way, it remains unclear whether or not Sprint and Softbank will actually be looking into discussions with Charter. Back on November 2nd, a report surfaced that Softbank was interested in talking about a potential Charter deal since the merger with T-Mobile would not be happening. Though Sprint stated in today’s official announcement that it saw moving forward on its own as the best course of action, with no T-Mobile deal on the table, its parent company Softbank would now have more room to pursue a potential Charter merger.