“Deutsche Telekom AG said it’s in talks with MetroPCS Communications Inc. to combine their U.S. wireless businesses, giving T-Mobile USA the greater scale it needs to compete with Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc.,” Cornelius Rahn, Aaron Kirchfeld and Jeffrey McCracken report for Bloomberg.
“The plan includes putting the U.S. operators into one company in which Deutsche Telekom will hold the majority of shares, the Bonn-based company said in a statement today, confirming a Bloomberg report,” Rahn, Kirchfeld and McCracken report. “Deutsche Telekom’s supervisory board is scheduled to meet in Bonn tomorrow to approve the transaction, people with knowledge of the matter said, asking not to be identified because the plan is confidential.”
Rahn, Kirchfeld and McCracken report, “MetroPCS shares jumped as much as 26 percent to the highest level in 14 months in New York. Deutsche Telekom has been considering a deal with MetroPCS to create a U.S. operator which would be publicly listed, people familiar told Bloomberg in May. T-Mobile USA, with 33.2 million customers at the end of June, or a third of each of market leaders Verizon Wireless and AT&T, is seeking to stem client losses it has suffered partly because it doesn’t have the rights to sell Apple Inc.’s iPhone… T-Mobile USA, the fourth-largest U.S. carrier, has lost 2.76 million contract customers, or more than 10 percent of its subscriber base, in the eight quarters through June.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Life sucks for the iPhoneless.
Well said, MDN! Well said!
Let me guess… Metro PCS doesn’t offer the iPhone either?… Brilliant!!!
TMob will gladly hook up your unlocked iPhone. Of Course you will have to wait a few months [or longer depending on your location] to get LTE.
I believe MetroPCS does have the eye phone.
This is going to be the repeat of Sprint – Nextel merger… One is CDMA (metroPCS), other GSM (T-Mobile). How much money will it cost to consolidate the towers, back end systems, software, hardware and everything else onto one of the two (presumably, GSM)?
In the end, though, it might provide clarity with respect to the roadmap, which might make Apple consider them as a partner. Probably the only reason why T-Mob has no iPhone is the fact that they were to merge with AT&T anyway, so it was wasteful to enter negotiations. Now that they are not, the other issue can be discussed (incompatible frequencies). As T-Mob has already been growing their iPhone-compatible segment (since last year), this may yet to be overcome, and T-Mob may end up eventually, six years later, make a deal and embrace the Jesus phone after all.
“MacDailyNews Take: Life sucks for the iPhoneless.”
No it doesn’t.
You sound as one of those individuals that stands in line for days every time a new iPhone is released believing you are somehow, on top of “life” because of it. I believe it is about half of all cell phones are smart phone. That means the other half are the so called “dumb” phones. Of the smart phone market, the Android OS controls more than half of that market while Apple has about 33%. That’s a lot of people without smart phones and even more without the iPhone. Their life doesn’t suck. Maybe you should look at yours.