T-Mobile and Sprint are closer than ever to a potential merger

T-Mobile and Sprint are the third and fourth largest smartphone carriers, respectively, in the United States. Rumors of a potential merger between the two companies began as early as 2014 only for them to reignite early last year due to changes in U.S. regulations by the Trump administration. Now, sources close to Reuters are claiming that both Deutsche Telekom and SoftBank could close a deal as early as next week where the latter would retain the majority stake while allowing the former to consolidate the merger.

Even if T-Mobile and Sprint were to combine their resources, the total subscriber count of approximately 127 million would still be fewer than those of AT&T and Verizon who are sitting at 150 million and 141 million, respectively.

Sprint is the last major wireless carrier in the U.S. to run primarily on CDMA technology whereas most providers worldwide are GSM. As a result, most Sprint smartphones are generally incompatible with GSM providers and vice versa with a few exceptions. Reuters is citing unnamed analysts claiming that Sprint alone "lacks the scale needed" to pose a significant threat against larger competitors like AT&T and Verizon.

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