Signals from the U.S. Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission are making Sprint and its SoftBank owners reconsider any possible bid for rival T-Mobile, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. Merging two of the four remaining nationwide mobile carriers was always going to be a difficult sell, but the Journal reports that Sprint CEO Dan Hesse and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son were surprised at the amount of resistance they encountered in recent talks with regulators. New FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has told Gigaom he doesn’t want to see the current level of mobile competition in the U.S. reduced. That doesn’t rule a Sprint-T-Mo deal out entirely, but it doesn’t look good either.
Story posted at: online.wsj.com
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