Senior executives from the two have met Jessica Rosenworcel, a member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to tell her of the benefits of merging the two companies to create a powerful competitor to AT&T and Verizon.
The FCC is running an 180-day review of the proposed $26 billion merger, with another 39 days to run – though the US regulator has stopped the clock a number of times.
However if the consultation continues without a further break, the process should be complete by the end of May.
Rosenworcel met three executives of T-Mobile US, which is majority controlled by Deutsche Telekom: CEO John Legere, COO Michael Sievert and CTO Neville Ray. Marcelo Claure, CEO of SoftBank-controlled Sprint, was also present. “The transaction will create – not reduce – jobs, both directly and indirectly,” their lawyer, DLA Piper partner Nancy Victory, reported in a filing after the meeting.
The executives told the FCC (PDF here) that 5G traffic would be almost triple what T-Mobile US and Sprint would each be able to deliver alone – 21 exabytes compared with a total of 7.7EB by the unmerged companies.
The average throughput would be 451Mbps, more than four times what T-Mobile US would be able to deliver. The whole combined company will be able to deliver 4.2Gbps, they said, with coverage improving across the US (see map). They said 293 million people will be able to get speeds of more than 100Mbps.
