German newspaper Spiegel's online outlet ran a story Saturday about a possible takeover in the offing that would shake up the US cell phone market in a big way. According to Spiegel Online, Deutsche Telekom - the parent company of T-Mobile Europe and T-Mobile USA - is eyeing an acquisition of Sprint, which would effectively mean the merger of the US's #3 and #4 mobile carriers.
Between Sprint Nextel's recent share price drop and the strength of the euro as compared to the dollar, DT executives view the transaction as a bargain, according to Speigel. Of course, that bargain might quickly be negated by T-Mobie USA's having to absorb Sprint's CDMA, iDEN, and (possibly) WiMAX technologies into their own GSM and now-rolling-out HSDPA infrastructure. Sounds messy to me.
Just for the sake of throwing all of the rumors into one big pile, I'll also mention that Tmonews claims to have some info on a "supposed" eight week program T-Mobile is working on to bump Sprint's Customer Care standards up to an acceptable level. If that's true, it certainly spices this bit of news up a bit. But, you know, it's on the Internet so who knows if it's true or not.
I, for one, am all for this rumor coming true. Think about it: T-Mobile customer service and "do it last but get it right" attitude combined with Sprint's zippy network and penchant for getting innovative devices first? And Sprint's SERO plan pricing? I think I might go buy some stock...