There were rumors recently that went around, touting that Sprint was about to purchase a stake over in T-Mobile. While this has also caused ripples in the stock market, the thing is, such a move or consideration was better described as a “trial balloon.” The Wall Street Journal that broke the news (or rather, rumor), did not manage to pinpoint the specific source as to how they came about with such a report, but only mentioned that they were informed by “people” that this could very well turn out to be true.
Speculations as to what happened could have been this – someone over at Softbank, coincidentally the majority owner of Sprint, phoned a friend who knew someone at The Journal, and decided to mention something that pointed out that at least a suit in Softbank could be mulling over the inclusion of T-Mobile to Softbank’s companies. Other than that, there has been nothing remotely concrete for such a story to turn up. Why a trial balloon? Well, it is useful to see what kind of reaction that the rest of the world would show, ranging from competitors to shareholders and the government, of course, should such a merger be actually proposed and go through.