We have extensively covered the possibility of T-Mobile’s acquisition over the past few months and while initially it was believed that Sprint will go ahead and pick it up, now it looks like T-Mobile U.S. may come under French ownership. Recently French telco Iliad submitted a surprise bid for the carrier which was ultimately rejected for being too low. Since then Iliad has reportedly reached out to private equity firms in order to raise finances and submit a revised bid that would be acceptable to T-Mobile’s majority stake holder Deutsche Telekom.
An exclusive report from Reuters claims that Iliad has set an internal mid-October deadline by which it has to decide whether the initial bid for T-Mobile U.S. is going to be improved or if its going to throw in the towel as well.
Even though Deutsche Telekom has hinted that it would be open to a revised bid that meets the criteria, some believe that DT won’t go with the French telco since it has no customer base and no spectrum in the U.S. DT will reportedly only agree to sell if the suitor is one who can actually improve T-Mobile’s standing in the U.S. market. Sprint was in the position of doing that, Iliad has no footing in the U.S.
It has also been rumored that Dish is interested in acquiring T-Mobile as well but is waiting it out until the AWS-3 spectrum auction which takes place in November. Recent numbers show that T-Mobile is performing well on its own as far as growth in subscribers is concerned but its majority stakeholder Deutsche Telekom isn’t completely opposed to the idea of a buyout.
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