T-Mobile on Wednesday officially completed its merger with Sprint, putting years of rumors, speculation, and regulatory processes to rest.
For customers there’s little that changes at the moment. The Sprint name will continue on as its own brand but it belongs to T-Mobile. Ultimately it will be merged into the larger brand but that’s a ways off. Sprint as a company is no longer trading on the stock exchange under its own symbol.
As part of the conditions during the regulatory approval process T-Mobile has committed to keeping its prices in place for at lest three years.
The two carriers had been making adjustments over the last few years, prepping for the merger. As such, most of the phones introduced over the last couple of generations are capable of accessing T-Mobile and Sprint networks. Sprint customers are also going to see expanded roaming on the T-Mobile network provided they have one of the newer models.
Although all major wireless service providers are fast at work deploying 5G in sub-6GHz and mmWave radio frequencies, the new T-Mobile will have an added advantage. Sprint‘s unique band 41 (2.5GHz) is a bridge of sorts between the two and blends high speed with broad coverage.
According to T-Mobile, the newly merged experience will offer “14 times more capacity in the next six years” than it has today. Moreover, average 5G speeds will be up to 15 times faster than current LTE over the next six years.
By the time everything is fully deployed, T-Mobile plans to cover 99% of US population with 5G, with speeds in excess of 100Mbps to 90% of them.
T-Mobile also announced that Mike Sievert has replaced John Legere as the CEO of T-Mobile. The move comes about one month earlier than previously announced.
Read more about the merger at T-Mobile and Sprint.