US judge approves T-Mobile merger with Sprint

A federal judge on Tuesday ruled in favour of T-Mobile’s takeover of Sprint in a deal that would further concentrate corporate ownership of technology, combining the nation’s third- and fourth-largest wireless carriers and creating a new telecommunications giant to take on rivals AT&T and Verizon.

The decision, by Judge Victor Marrero of US District Court in Manhattan, comes in an unusual suit filed in June by attorneys general from 13 states and the District of Columbia. The challenge was brought after regulators at the Department of Justice and Federal Communications Commission gave their blessing to the deal.

The states argued that the combination of T-Mobile and Sprint would reduce competition in the telecommunications industry, lead to higher mobile phone bills and place a financial burden on lower-income customers.

The deal will create a new telecommunications giant, taking the name of T-Mobile, that will have more than 100 million customers.

T-Mobile and Sprint have long said the merger was crucial to their futures in an industry challenged by pricing wars that have undercut profits and stalled growth. By combining with Sprint, T-Mobile has said it would be able to accelerate its development of 5G, the next generation of cellular networks.

The deal is also important to Sprint, which has bled cash and subscribers in recent years. SoftBank, the Japanese conglomerate that controls Sprint, has been looking to raise cash for its newest tech investing fund.

The new company will be led by Mike Sievert, a T-Mobile executive who will take over from John Legere, the face of the company whose contract is up in April.

Legere, the flamboyant, social-media-savvy chief executive of T-Mobile since 2012, helped drive the merger, which won the approval of the Justice Department and the FCC last year. To get the nod from the government, T-Mobile and Sprint agreed to sell off significant portions of their businesses to the pay-television operator Dish Network as part of a plan to create a potential new major wireless company.

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