Businessweek has reported about a possible acquisition of T-Mobile USA (a Deutsche Telekom AG company), which would combine the 4th and 3rd largest carriers in the U.S into a single entity. Interestingly, T-Mobile has an estimated value of $15B+, which is more than Sprint’s own market value ($13.93B) as of today.
What businessweek reporters don’t mention is that such an acquisition would create a bizarre mix of GSM, CDMA and WiMax networks within the same company. Then what to do? Keep them all and have a mess, or give one up and lose billions in wireless infrastructure? (the infrastructure/capacity could be sold for cheap too).
In any case, there’s little to no real synergy in this deal other than: “we’re on the same boat”. If anything, AT&T gobbling up T-Mobile, and Verizon buying out Sprint, would both seem to make much more sense. “We’re not under pressure. We want the best solution.” says Deutsche Telekom. Maybe so, but DT’s options seem very limited in a deal with Sprint.
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