T-Mobile is the perpetual also-ran in the cellular race. It loses out to Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T every single quarter, it doesn’t have the iPhone, and it’s largely the butt of jokes in the cellular world.
Deutsche Telekom looked at the situation, thought hard about it and said “You know what we need? A company most people know about via being accused of racism in their ads!”
Hence, it has been confirmed that DT and MetroPCS, a regional carrier, have been in talks to merge their operations, kind of in the same way that you or I will be “merging” with a nice meal shortly. Yes, those two Indian actors will finally be out of a job, while the T-Mobile Girl will still be riding that motorcycle and looking like an off-brand Anne Hathaway.
According to both sides, this is actually happening.
MetroPCS today confirmed that it is in discussions with Deutsche Telekom regarding an agreement to combine T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS. There can be no assurances that any transaction will result from these discussions, and the company does not intend to comment further unless and until an agreement is reached.
It’s not really that much of a surprise. The benefit for T-Mobile is obvious: They forcibly add another ten million subscribers to their ranks, while MetroPCS manages to get out of the cellular game while the getting is good. Verizon and, inexplicably, AT&T are taking a larger and larger share of the market, so basically, the smaller companies are going to start eating each other until there’s only one or two of them left.
The bright side is that this merger should go much more smoothly than the last time T-Mobile tried to become part of something bigger.