T-Mobile US and Sprint have made progress in negotiating merger terms and are aiming to successfully complete the talks as early as next week, people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The news comes just a few weeks after reports the mobile operators had resumed merger talks and nearly six months after they abandoned earlier talks due to disagreement on price.
T-Mobile majority-owner Deutsche Telekom and Japan's SoftBank, which controls Sprint, are considering an agreement on how they exercise voting control over the combined company, two of the sources said. This could allow Deutsche Telekom to consolidate the combined company without owning a majority stake. Deutsche Telekom owns more than 63 percent of T-Mobile, while SoftBank owns 84.7 percent of Sprint.
Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile are also in the process of finalizing the debt financing package they will use to fund the deal, 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 Reuters report, both companies saw their share prices increase in after-hours trading, by 9 percent at Sprint and by 4 percent at T-Mobile.
