The United States’ top 3 and 4 carriers, respectively, T-Mobile and Sprint, have spent weeks in negotiations regarding the transfer to Dish of building blocks. The Department of Justice looks like it’s about to officially approve of the T-mobile Sprint merger. The two companies actually plan to hand assets over to Dish Network – the satellite-TV provider.
Updated on 24 April 2024
T Mobile and Sprint Merger
According to an article by The Wall Street Journal, the change of mind by the DOJ seems to be the result of the involvement of Dish. After renegotiations, terms included that they sell significant assets to the cable provider in order to keep a 4th competitor on the market. However, Dish would simply be dwarfed by the other 3 competitors in the market since it can’t keep up with the revenue and subscribers.
This is actually done because concerns were raised wherein the huge 26 billion dollar merger could potentially harm consumers due to the reduced price competition.
Under the sprint tmobile merger, it is apparent that Dish has to buy $1.4 billion worth of 9 million Sprint’s customers, which is mostly made up of the Sprint subsidiary: Boost Mobile customers. T mobile and Sprint have also agreed to sell $3.6 billion worth of 800MHz wireless spectrum to Dish. Lastly, as a part of their merger, they are to provide operational access to T-Mobile’s wireless network within the seven-year transition period.
DOJ’s Conditions on T-Mobile Sprint Merger
The Department of Justice was clear on their conditions for the Sprint TMobile merger. The two companies are to sell Boost Mobile to Dish, which in turn is to commit to offering wireless service.
They have not stated anything regarding pricing and rate promises except for the previous statement that T-Mobile not to raise prices for three years.
Another condition that the new company must abide by is the support of a technology called eSIM. This is essentially a software that is present in cellphones which makes it easier to switch between carriers. However, this is easier said than done. The Electronic Subscriber Identity Module can not be easily implemented by all companies. While new devices can easily support this software, other US carriers like Verizon and AT&T are still unpredictable since they recommend their customers to use the physical SIM card.
However, it looks like the t mobile and sprint merger still isn’t completely out of the woods. It seems like they are now also facing another legal challenge from a group of state attorney generals. The reason behind the lawsuit was because the merger could possibly harm the competition and raise prices for consumers.
What’s in store for the future?
The union of both Sprint and T-Mobile is predicted to garner a lot of revenue in the future. An estimated 80 million United States customers is to be expected which basically closes the gap between the competition, AT&T and Verizon.
The upcoming approval of the DOJ with this merger finally ends the year-long negotiations that actually fell through twice. Although it’s still in the works, we can expect to see great things budding from this new company merge.
