Mergers have been rather visible in the business news this year. It is not so easy to forget how Verizon, upon acquiring the internet assets of former online giant Google, had it merged with the remnants of another past internet pillar, AOL, to form a new subsidiary named Oath. Such a path also seems to be in the cards for two of America’s major phone carriers, Sprint and T-Mobile. Rumors have circulated about secret deals between the two companies ever since June of this year, and were magnified in July when Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure sent congratulatory tweets to his T-Mobile counterpart.
As the “un-carrier” continues to perform well in quarterly earnings for 2017, allegations of a planned merge with Sprint become more certain.
Tell-tale signs
Yet another significant indicator that both Sprint and T-Mobile are on the verge of finalizing a merger was pointed out this week when they both publicized their latest quarterly earnings. Where usually CEO John Legere of T-Mobile would relish the chance to boast of his company’s performance while slamming his competition, this time he is uncharacteristically silent. He declined to answer questions from company investors after the quarter earning call this Monday, October 23. At the same time Sprint, which has scheduled its release of second-quarter results this Wednesday, announced that no conference call will take place for them either.
👍 Seriously, no tricks, just earnings treats for all. $TMUS Q3 results = fantastic financial results across the board!! pic.twitter.com/kQNurpZETM
— John Legere (@JohnLegere) October 23, 2017
This enforced silence where the two carriers are concerned is being interpreted as a sign that both T-Mobile and Sprint may have come to some sort of accord; that they might be merging soon or that one has made an acquisition bid for the other.
It would not be the first time the current third and fourth largest mobile carriers in the US have talked about such a union. They have done it three years ago. The recent months have seen talk about the two escalating to a higher degree.
Talk of merging
At present, Sprint and T-Mobile are controlled by parent companies based outside the country.
T-Mobile is under Deutsche Telekom of Germany while Sprint is under the umbrella of Japanese carrier SoftBank. Neither of the two larger entities has said anything about their respective subsidiaries undergoing a merger. The one definitive statement that concerns the two companies joining up came from Sprint’s Marcelo Claure, who said that his company will address the merger talks sometime in the future.
If such a merger does happen, it will only help to boost T-Mobile’s resources even more, to cap off its impressive quarterly results. The un-carrier currently has the fastest internet download speed, even against the leading giants of Verizon and AT&T. T-Mobile and Sprint are also the forerunners of unlimited internet data plans which the larger companies have since copied.
