A report from last week suggested that French carrier Iliad had their eyes on T-Mobile, possibly giving Sprint a run for their money. However a recent report suggested that Sprint wasn’t about to take this lying down and that T-Mobile might have rejected Iliad’s bid. Well hopefully T-Mobile didn’t burn any bridges because according to the latest report from The Wall Street Journal, Sprint has reportedly given up.
The publication reports that according to people familiar with the matter, Sprint and its parent company, Japanese carrier SoftBank, has decided that the uphill battle of trying to convince regulators to approve the deal would simply be too difficult. This is hardly a surprise as the government was reportedly dead set against the deal even when it was still a rumor.
The government believes that the current amount of wireless carriers is just nice, and that consolidation of carriers, especially the major ones, could even up hurting customers since they would have less options to choose from. Sprint is expected to make an announcement on Wednesday to officially announce their withdrawal.
However we’re not sure if anything has been signed because if they did, they would have to pay T-Mobile a breakup fee, something that SoftBank’s CEO is clearly not relishing. We’re not sure if Iliad’s bid will still be on the table after this, but it would seem that is T-Mobile’s only other offer, at least for now.