Last year, AT&T and Deutsche Telekom entered into an agreement that would see the Big Blue carrier acquire T-Mobile USA from DT for a cool $39 billion. AT&T eventually abandoned its plans after facing opposition from the government. Now Deutsche Telekom CEO Rene Obermann has revealed that his company is unlikely to try and sell T-Mobile again, but that a merger with another entity is still an option. "We do not exclude any option for the T-Mobile unit in the U.S., also not a merger,” Obermann explained. The exec didn't touch on Deutsche Telekom's plans for T-Mobile any further, but Bloomberg has been told by sources that DT is considering a stock-swap with MetroPCS that would give the T-Mobile parent company control over the combined T-Mo/Metro.
The rumored merger between MetroPCS and T-Mobile first popped up earlier this month, but so far there's been nothing announced on the matter from either company or Deutsche Telekom on the matter. Such a move would allow T-Mobile access to some more AWS spectrum held by MetroPCS, but the two carriers also operate GSM and CDMA networks, respectively, a fact that may complicate things just a tad. It'll be interesting to watch T-Mobile in the coming months to see if any merger does indeed go down, so keep it locked to PhoneDog for more. Any of you think that a T-Mobile-MetroPCS merger will actually happen?
Via Phone Scoop, Bloomberg
