muzzled hydrate: T-Mobile/MetroPCS deal finally complete, public trading begins

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

T-Mobile/MetroPCS deal finally complete, public trading begins

T-Mobile SIM

Trading of the combined company can be tracked by the "TMUS" ticker on the NYSE

After a standard delay when looking to combine companies of this size, the T-Mobile/MetroPCS reverse takeover has finally gone through. While there may not be any instant noticeable changes on the consumer side, there's a whole lot of business restructuring going on. The combined company will now be known as "T-Mobile US, Inc.", and will in effect be taking T-Mobile "public" (previously a private company owned by Deutsch Telekom) under the stock ticker "TMUS". The "new" company has the same CEO, John Legere, with former Vice Chairman and CFO of MetroPC J. Braxton Carter taking over the new CFO position. The board of directors will now include two members previously of MetroPCS as well.

So what can we expect as consumers now that the deal has gone through? As a T-Mobile customer, not a whole lot. The "UNcarrier" is in a serious transition phase with its new plans, device financing and LTE rollout right now, and this deal completing doesn't change those plans. As a current MetroPCS customer, you can expect things to shake up a bit as the CDMA network is quickly phased out in favor of T-Mobile's GSM one and T-Mobile's vision for the MetroPCS brand is put into effect. As we previously noted, MetroPCS will continue on offering service as a separate brand for the time being.

The end result will hopefully be a stronger T-Mobile with more customers (43 million now) and money to work with to expand its new LTE network. MetroPCS brings a positive cash flow and solid spectrum holdings that compliment T-Mobile's existing spectrum nicely. T-Mobile stated today it plans to have a 20x20MHz LTE network available in 90-percent of the top 25 metro areas in 2014, and cover 200 million PoPs with LTE by the end of 2013.

Source: T-Mobile (BusinessWire)