Rumor: T-Mobile USA Owner, Deutsche Telekom, Considering Buying Sprint: But, Why? No Synergy There!

The UK’s Telegraph is reporting a head-shaking-causing news item…

T-Mobile owner eyes multi-billion dollar bid for Sprint

And, no I’m not shaking my head in disbelief because T-Mobile USA is so much smaller than Sprint. This is not about tiny T-Mobile USA. It is about its gigantic parent company Deutsche Telekom. This doesn’t make any sense to me as US market play. Sprint and T-Mobile use completely different wireless voice and data technologies (CDMA vs. GSM for voice for example). There is no synergy there. In fact, it reminds me of the odd merger of Sprint and Nextel. Sprint bought Nextel back in 2005. But, four years later, Sprint still hasn’t integrated the two firms in a way that makes sense to me. If you walk into a Sprint store, you’ll see Sprint’s CDMA phone on one wall and Nextel’s IDEN phones across the room on another wall. Where’s the synergy there?

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