T-Mobile and Sprint to merge

Early morning news on February 11, 2020, according to foreign media reports, three people familiar with the matter revealed that in the protracted litigation caused by the merger plan of T-Mobile and Sprint, the judge ruled in favor of the two companies.

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In 2018, US mobile operators T-Mobile and Sprint announced that they would merge in an all-stock transaction valued at $26 billion. The new company after the merger will be called "New T-Mobile" and will be headquartered at T-Mobile's headquarters in Bellevue, Washington.

In June 2019, attorneys general from 13 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit to try to prevent the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint. Prior to this lawsuit, federal regulators had approved the transaction plan of both parties, but several states believed that the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint would reduce competition in the telecommunications industry, lead to higher user bills, and impose an economic burden on low-income consumers.

The lawsuit has become the biggest stumbling block to the merger of the two operators. However, if the judge's final ruling is in favor of T-Mobile and Sprint, the transaction will form a huge telecommunications company with more than 100 million users.

T-Mobile and Sprint are the third and fourth largest mobile operators in the United States, with market shares of 19% and 12% respectively. The largest mobile operator in the United States is Verizon, with a market share of about 36%, followed by AT&T, with a market share of about 30%. After the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint, its scale will surpass AT&T and become the second largest mobile operator in the United States. The US mobile operator market will also form a "three-kingdom" situation.

The merger between T-Mobile and Sprint is aimed squarely at 5G.

The two companies have said that the merger will help the United States surpass China in the development of 5G mobile networks. T-Mobile and Sprint announced in a statement that after the merger, the two companies will build the most extensive and highest-capacity mobile network in American history. In the next three years, they will invest $30 billion to build new networks and deploy new services, and plan to increase the national average network speed by 15 times by 2024.