The Sprint/T-Mobile merger may be off for good

T-Mobile and Sprint are the biggest "will they or won't they" story since Ross and Rachel. We've watched for years as SoftBank, who owns Sprint, and Deutsche Telekom, who owns T-Mobile, have danced around a merger of the nations third and fourth largest carriers. Things had seemingly begun to heat up over the last few months, but a new report is throwing water on the merger.

According to Nikkei, Softbank is responsible for calling off the merger. SoftBank and DT had previously agreed to a framework that would've combined the two carriers, but the sticking point comes at the ownership share each would hold. Many had assumed that since T-Mobile has an advantage in total subscribers that it would hold a majority ownership in the combined company. It seems that SoftBank's executives aren't on board with that idea and voted to call off the talks.  SoftBank is reportedly going to break off negotiations on Tuesday in a meeting with DT.

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Is it possible that SoftBank is using the press coverage as negotiating tactic to get DT to give up the controlling interest in the proposed carrier? The German company has always had a somewhat hot and cold relationship with its American subsidiary.

Even if the merger were to happen, many questions still remain. If SoftBank does gain majority ownership, would they keep around John Legere after he's thrown so much shade at Sprint? How would the new company integrate the competing technologies that it currently uses? Would a merger even be approved by the Federal Communications Commission and Department of Justice?

What do you think? Is SoftBank just bluffing? Would you be in favor of a joint Sprint and T-Mobile carrier? Let us know down in the comments.

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