Snippet: T-Mobile & Sprint Get Department of Justice Approval to Merge ☇

Brian Heater for TechCrunch:

The U.S. Department of Justice this morning gave the green light to T-Mobile US and Sprint for their proposed $26 billion merger. The deal, which would combine the nation’s third and fourth largest carriers (by subscriber number) has been green lit on the condition that Sprint sell its prepaid assets (including Boost Mobile) to Dish Network.

As part of the deal, some nine million prepaid subscribers will move over to Dish, which will also have access to T-Mobile/Sprint’s network for a period of seven years.

I found Dish to be an interesting player in this whole process—they’ve owned spectrum for years and haven’t necessarily had an interest in actually using it. If they do use this opportunity to really compete, they could be a much more formidable competitor than Sprint has been lately. Plus, with traditional video services dying, this could be an opportunity to get into the home Internet business and selling Sling in a new way.