BIG THREE

Justice Department Approves T-Mobile, Sprint Merger

The companies agreed to sell Sprint’s prepaid business to Dish Network.

The Justice Department approved a merger between T-Mobile and Sprint on Friday, The Wall Street Journal reports. As part of the agreement, which allows the merger between the third and fourth largest carriers in the United States, T-Mobile will sell off some of Sprint’s assets to satellite-TV provider Dish Network so that it can create a new wireless network. Sprint’s prepaid business will go to Dish and Dish 5G customers will have access to T-Mobile and Sprint’s merged network for seven years. After the merger, 95 percent of U.S. cellphone customers will reportedly be signed up with the nation’s top three companies.

“With this merger and accompanying divestiture, we are expanding output significantly by ensuring that large amounts of currently unused or underused spectrum are made available to American consumers in the form of high quality 5G networks,” Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim said in a Justice Department press release. T-Mobile CEO John Legere said the new Dish 5G network would be “a bigger and bolder competitor than ever before” and would provide “lower prices, better quality, unmatched value” to customers.