Back in December, a rumor started going around that following AT&T’s aborted effort to acquire T-Mobile, Sprint was now interested in taking a shot at the carrier, and we might some day see a combined Sprint/T-Mobile emerge with a network and user base large enough to compete on the same level as AT&T and Verizon. We’ve heard critical assessments both applauding and decrying the idea, but regardless of how anyone feels about the proposed merger, we’ve been anxious to get some official word on whether or not it might actually be moving forward. This afternoon, we get an update that makes it sound pretty darn unlikely that any deal will be happening.
Bloomberg News reports that T-Mobile US parent company Deutsche Telekom’s CEO has said that a sale of the carrier is unlikely to happen anytime soon.
Granted, big acquisitions like we were talking about here take time, especially with all the governmental oversight that’s involved, so we have to look at this “not happening soon” statement in the same light; a message like that doesn’t just suggest that the approval process might take a while, but that any plans for a merger aren’t moving forward at all.
None of this is to say that T-Mobile won’t find itself snatched-up by a competitor in the years to come, but this current discussion of a Sprint merger might just be dissolving before it gets nearly as far as AT&T’s effort did.