Monday, July 15, 2013

The case for T-Mobile bidding on Leap Wireless

After the never-ending Leap Wireless and Metro PCS merger speculation saga, AT&T finally decided the other day to put Leap Wireless out of their misery by agreeing to purchase the company for $1.2Bn.

The deal makes sense for AT&T, no doubt about it. They get an interesting mix of PCS and AWS spectrum which they badly need after the T-Mobile merger debacle. To sweeten the deal, they also get about 5M Leap customers as well as ownership of the brand "Cricket". On top of this, the deal is a test to see what the federal regulators, FCC and Department of Justice will tolerate after the regulators killed the proposed T-Mobile merger.

All this for only $1.2Bn. Congratulations AT&T!

I will here make the case for why T-Mobile (or to a lesser degree, Sprint) should, or possibly must, get involved and start bidding on Leap Wireless before the deal with AT&T is closed.