[_mlbt]

Sprint was not going to survive. They were circling the drain and needed to be acquired to be rescued. I was a customer of theirs and they could literally only compete on price. T-mobile wasn’t in much better shape. Post merger the improvement in network quality and customer service has been night and day. Sprint owned tons of spectrum but was terrible at using it. T-mobile was spectrum starved and would not have the network they have today without purchasing Sprint.

Sprint literally bet on the wrong technology every single generation. They also had trouble getting many popular phones because they used such oddball network technology.

[ryankshaw]

My understanding is that T-mobile solved their spectrum issue in the failed deal with AT&T. As part of the penalties of the deal not going through, AT&T had to give them a bunch of spectrum, and some cash to build out towers to deploy that new spectrum.