Over the past month, we’ve seen two mergers in the wireless world. First came Verizon and Alltel, with the former acquiring the latter for roughly $27 billion. Late last week, we saw another, with Virgin Mobile purchasing Helio in a merger of Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNO). This leaves the cellular-loving world wondering: Who’s next? There’s a rumor swirling that T-Mobile’s parent, Deutsche Telekom, might want to buy Sprint. So let’s see what that might look like.
Largest carrier in America?
At the end of the first quarter of 2008, Sprint had 52.8 million subscribers. Add that to T-Mobile’s current 30 million subscribers, and you get over 80 million. AT&T ended the first quarter with 71.4 million subscribers. Verizon had 67.2 million, and Alltel had 13 million. So when you smush everything together, it looks like T-Mobile/Sprint would come out ahead.
However, that doesn’t take into consideration a number of factors. For ...
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