September 13, 2009 | According to UK based Telegraph newspaper, Deutsche Telekom has called in banking advisers to study a possible multi-billion dollar bid for Sprint Nextel, the third-largest mobile phone operator in the US.

Sources told newspaper that Deutsche Telekom (DT) could submit a bid for Sprint, which has a market valuation of $10.6bn (£6.3bn), within the next few weeks.

The newspaper said that Deutsche Telekom could fund a deal by calling on its shareholders for funds. The German government controls a 15% stake in Deutsche Telekom directly and holds another 17% via state-owned bank KfW Bankengruppe.

Combined, T-Mobile, the fourth-placed operator, and Sprint, the third biggest player, would closely challenge AT&T's second-place spot with 78.2m customers.

The separate CDMA and GSM networks are likely to converge over time as network operators move towards deploying LTE based networks en-mass from next year. Such a convergence would significantly lower the upgrade costs as well as slicing into the operational cost base.

Original Story