Rumor: Deutsche Telecom to Acquire Sprint

I don’t want to predict a disaster but having Deutsche Telecom acquire Sprint doesn’t make sense from the perspective of all the different network types these companies use. Sprint uses CDMA, Deutsche Telecom’s T-Mobile uses GSM and Nextel uses iDEN. Oh, don’t forget to add WiMAX to this mix.

It is unclear how many of the Sprint/Nextel problems were do to management problems as opposed to having to deal with two disparate network types.

Adding yet another technology to the mix seems like something only a masochist would want to do.

Oh, did I mention Merrill Lynch predicted that Deutsche Telecom will acquire Sprint? Merrill has a point from a market share perspective. I just have to ask what sort of tech/standards/integration disaster Deutsche Telecom would have on its hands if this deal happens.

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  • Michael Graves
    March 7, 2008 at 3:55 pm

    It’s so much worse than that even. The combined company would have 5 different network types to support, as pointed out by Om Malik and some of his readers.
    GSM, CDMA, iDEN, WiMAX and UMTS.
    What a mess that would be!

  • Rich Tehrani
    March 7, 2008 at 5:50 pm

    Excellent point and thanks for mentioning it. Well at least they all use the same Bluetooth standard — I hope. 🙂

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