Report: T-Mobile Considers Sprint Acquisition

Add Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile to the list of companies vying to reverse Sprint Nextel's decline. According to reports from Germany's Der Spiegel magazine, T-Mobile is considering acquiring Sprint.

The report gained some credence when Sprint didn't make a scheduled announcement Friday of its new Advanced Wireless Services-based network.

An acquisition by Deutsche Telekom, helped by the strength of the euro over the U.S. dollar, would leapfrog AT&T and Verizon Wireless and create the largest cell phone service provider in the United States. The challenge for T-Mobile would be to sort out the various wireless standards utilized by the different providers. T-Mobile uses the GSM standard while Sprint uses CDMA and Nextel iDEN.

Sprint has been struggling to integrate Nextel into its network and recently wrote nearly $30 billion off of its $35 billion acquisition price of Nextel.

Meanwhile, Sprint has been talking with its on-again, off-again partner Clearwire about deploying WiMax; also reported to be talking about joining the WiMax combine at different times are Comcast, Intel, and Time Warner.

The Wall Street Journal said Deutsche Telekom has become more interested in Sprint as the dollar weakens against the euro and as Sprint's stock has plunged. The acquisition speculation, however, drove Sprint up in early trading Monday morning.