Sprint and T-Mobile US have rekindled their merger talks, people familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal. This would be the third time in four years the companies discuss a merger.
The latest discussions come just five months after the previous talks were abandoned, reportedly due to an inability of the shareholders to agree on who would control the company. Since then Sprint's share price has fallen by around 20 percent.
The latest discussions are at a preliminary stage, the report said.
A merger would create the US' second-largest mobile operator with nearly 100 million customers, ahead of AT&T and behind Verizon. After the WSJ report, both companies saw their share prices increase, by 17 percent at Sprint and by 5.6 percent at T-Mobile.
