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by johnnyanmac 953 days ago
Probably not a surprising fact, but fun fact: Sprint tried buying t-mobile first and it was blocked by courts. It was quite surprising to hear it happening the other way around since I thought Sprint was always larger than T-Mobile.

But yes, the nextel merger and the bad gamble with wiMax definitely sunk them long term.

1 comments

AT&T was blocked from buying T-Mobile, not Sprint.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempted_purchase_of_T-Mobile...

Both happened:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merger_of_Sprint_Corporation...

>In December 2013, multiple reports indicated that Sprint Corporation and its parent company SoftBank were working towards a deal to acquire a majority stake in T-Mobile US for at least US$20 billion...On August 4, 2014, Bloomberg reported that Sprint had abandoned its bid to acquire T-Mobile, considering the unlikelihood that such a deal would be approved by the U.S. government and its regulators

I guess saying it got blocked is subtly inaccurate, though. They simply stopped because they weren't confident in getting through antitrust.

> Sprint Corporation and its parent company SoftBank

Why am I not surprised to see that name. Is there anything that SoftBank touched that's not a complete failure? What the fuck have they been doing besides burning Saudi oil sheik money?