T-Mobile and Sprint officially confirmed today that they will be joining forces to become a single carrier, according to a press release from the new combined company. If the deal passes regulatory approval, this means that there will be three major carriers in the United States, compared to the current four.
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AT&T and DirecTV’s $48.5 billion merger has been approved today following more than a year of regulatory review. The merger will see AT&T become the biggest pay-TV company, passing up cable company Comcast. AT&T says it will serve more than 26 million U.S. customers and 19 million users in Latin America.
Sprint’s plans to buy out the U.S. arm of T-Mobile from Deutsche Telekom came to an end today, the Wall Street Journal reported. According to the Journal, Sprint’s leadership was concerned that it would be too difficult to get United States regulators to agree to the merger.
The announcement is not yet official, but is said to be planned for Wednesday. If the merger had suceeded, the two companies would have united under the Sprint banner, possibly abandoning all of the “un-carrier” moves made by T-Mobile in recent years, including free one-week iPhone test drives on the network and unlimited music streaming on a variety of services.
All Things D reports that T-Mobile is finally taking advantage of this year’s MetroPCS merger. The fourth-largest mobile carrier in the U.S. plans to use the new spectrum to offer even faster speeds on its LTE network nationwide. Some markets are already seeing an increase in speed, and more will see faster service next year. The company says it hopes to cover up to 90% of its current subscriber base with improved service.
In direct contrast to this data network improvement, T-Mobile is also planning to launch new pre-paid plans with no data allowance included, according to TMo News. The carrier confirmed that the new plans will come with unlimited talk and text, but will not include any data. These new pre-paid plans will be available on December 8th, the the same day AT&T is launching its new selection of plans.
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Update: Talking to AllThingsD, T-Mobile CEO John Legere says an iPhone on MetroPCS is a possibility but “not imminent.”
“The answer to that is not ‘No,’” Legere said, but added, “It’s not imminent; I think that’s safe to say.” “It’s also something that involves Apple…. we’ve started those dialogues with our partners.”
We already knew that both company’s boards had approved the merger of T-mobile USA and MetroPCS, but today the No. 4 and No. 5 U.S. carriers have officially announced the merger is now complete. Starting today the two companies will become one and begin trading under the ticker “TMUS” on the New York Stock Exchange:
Under the terms of the business combination agreement, MetroPCS effected a 1 for 2 reverse stock split, made a cash payment of $1.5 billion to its stockholders (approximately $4.05 per share prior to the reverse stock split), and acquired all of T-Mobile’s capital stock from Deutsche Telekom in exchange for approximately 74% of MetroPCS’ common stock on a pro forma basis.
MetroPCS has never offered the iPhone to its 9 million customers, but today’s announcement means the carrier will begin migrating to T-Mobile’s network infrastructure and presumably eventually support the iPhone alongside T-Mobile for its customer base. The new combined company will be lead by T-Mobile CEO John Legere, but for now T-Mobile and MetroPCS will continue to operate as separate brands.
Verizon Wireless, which recently teamed up with telecommunications giant Comcast Corporation, is reportedly offering Clearwire Corp $1.5 billion in an effort to lease spectrum from the wireless communications company, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Meanwhile, Dish Network has motioned toward a $25.5 billion bid to merge with Sprint, which is notable as Dish and Sprint both competed toward buying out Clearwire in January.
It seems all three major telecommunications companies are moving toward owning expanded space in mobile broadband as well as home services like cable and voice, much like AT&T’s unified package.
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Remember Quark? The developer of popular publishing software QuarkXPress has been sold to merger and acquisition firm Platinum Equity, and, according to a report from Techcrunch, the company is already focusing on finding a new home for the Quark’s IP. In the midst of heated patent battles between smartphone makers, what might the patents and technologies owned by Quark have to offer Apple?
Magazine and newspaper subscriptions are a big focus for Apple, it’s clear with the introduction of Newsstand in iOS 5, an app dedicated to helping manage digital subscriptions. Quark recently launched their QuarkXPress 9 publishing software that will allow publications to “design for and publish to digital devices in a variety of formats”, specifically the iPad, “without requiring the services of a programmer.”
Apple has helped Quark in the past, offering their services to get the publishing platform working on Mac OSX.
The majority of large publications have millions in funding behind them when creating the digital version of their magazines for the iPad. However, if Apple were to integrate Quark software into an SDK specifically for publishers, the subscriptions market on iOS devices might closer resemble the ecosystem currently in place for games. In other words, giving developers without millions in funding the “tools to convert existing layouts to rich, interactive content — or create new iPad content from scratch” may bring with it a rush of quality content with subscription models much more attractive to users than those offered by the larger publications.
Apple is clearly making digital subscriptions a focus in iOS 5 with Newsstand Kit, which provides the ability update issues in the background and auto-update subscriptions, but the SDK certainly falls short of everything Quark software could offer publishers.
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