[rumor] possible sprint/tmobile merger?

Slightly old news (speculation on this has been on for several weeks), but certainly worthy of discussion. It would be interesting how they would make this work, though ... would a new Sprint under T-Mobile continue into the future with its otherwise successful CDMA/EvDO network? What happens to WiMax?

 

Sprint, TMobile and Alltel mergers have been in the rumor mill for a couple years now, each talking about buying each other out. With Alltel gone and Sprint making bad deal after bad deal, its inevitable for Deutsche Telekom to buy Sprint. Both of these companies will struggle otherwise.

The GSM/CDMA barrier doesn't matter. Verizon already makes GSM/CDMA phones and the wireless industry is switching to LTE, so in a few short years, GSM/CDMA/EVDO/UTMS will be ancient history like AMPs. Of course, Sprint foolishly chose WiMax, which makes buying them difficult. I foresee Tmobile and Sprint merging and Sprint switching to LTE.

 

Would at least make them more of a force in the mobile industry, T-Mobile has been getting some pretty good phones by themselves though

 

The similar price plans make sense in a way. Sprint's Customer Service does need to get some good CS injection from Tmobile since Sprint's sucks so bad

 

That would be the absolute worst possible thing that could happen to T-Mobile customers. Sprint customers are used to crappy customer service at the promise of a cheaper bill. Bringing over Sprint customers into the fold will ruin T-Mobile for those of us who have been with them for years. I like my service provider to be smaller and more customer friendly, I am not sure duplicating the AT&T experience is worth doing.

 

The rule of thumb is the lowest common denominator, so I would not bet on CS improving or even staying the same. Things will definitely get worse.

 

i just hope they stick with gsm.

 

Tmobile is way bigger than sprint. I think they would be doing the buying.

 

Very well said. At home we had Sprint a long time ago but switched to T-Mobile because of dropped calls. We have been very happy for many years. Unfortunately, my company just switched from T-Mobile to Sprint and things aren't going well. It was a huge mistake. The voice quality is inferior and people constantly ask me to repeat myself. I know T-Mobile wants scale and has been looking at Sprint for a long time, but I hope they go it alone.

 

Yup, *currently sporting an iPhone on T-Mobile's network*

 

Same here. I hate phones that don't use sim cards.

 

Did you know CDMA phones use sim cards in every country other than the US. The CDMA phone in the US have sim cards, they are just permanently soldered into the phone because of the subsidies the carriers provide for hardware.

 

There are dual mode phones on the market that support CDMA and GSM.

 

yea, got a nice jump in the sprint stock.

 

if they merge, i hope tmo waives the ETF so i can jump ship

 

I disagree. Tmobile doesn't really have that flagship phone. Don't get me wrong, they have some good phones but it always seems like the best phones, especially Android, are on rival carriers. Sprint has the Evo, Verizon has the Droid, ATT has the iPhone, ect. I hope Tmobile steps up and gets one of these dual core phones like the Optimus 2x because that Atrix4G is a beast.

 

The HTC Pyramid is on T-Mobile's horizon. Will be dual-core. It's supposed to rival anything out there.

This sounds like more talk. Eventually something might happen.

 

Hopefully this works out, but the Sprint and Nextel merger didn't work out at all. Hopefully this time it works out. T-mobile shouldn't look to buy Clearwire spectrum either. 2.5 ghz is a horrible spectrum to operate on, that's equivalent to peoples cordless house phones.

Now if Sprint and Tmobile can somehow make the jump to LTE in a couple years (Sprints already talking to Lightsquared about LTE) it'll work out in the long run.

It's going to be costly to maintain an AWS 3g network, CDMA, GSM, HSPA+, and Wi-max network.