Rumors of a merger between two of the industry’s largest carriers—T-Mobile and Sprint—have yet again begun to heat up, reports Light Reading.
The two flirted with an agreement in August 2014, a merger that would have been worth an estimated $32 billion. Furthermore, T-Mobile CEO John Legere, when asked about potential mergers and partnerships in the past, has not ruled out the possibility.
Howard Mandel, President of Cleveland-based Peppertree Capital Management, said that carrier consolidation would be a negative in the short-term, especially for tower companies. Long term, however, it would not have a large impact on network deployment.
“Carrier consolidation would be disruptive in the near term. It would delay build plans while the consolidating entities attempt to understand their combined network. It would also stir the pot as the key network personnel at the consolidating carriers vie to retain their positions – and the various tower companies vie to retain relationships with the surviving carrier personnel,” Mandel told Inside Towers. ”In the long run, however, there will be the same number of subscribers using dramatically increasing amounts of data, so carrier consolidation is not likely to materially limit network deployment.”
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