Well, this is an interesting development in the new Connected Age. How to buy your rival who is twice your size? Wait for them to stumble in understanding digital communities, then when their stock price tumbles to half what it was, buy them.. Like we say here with Alan, you gotta understand digital communities to survive. That is what we wrote in the book, and it might well be that the biggest case study of the new era is being created right now, in that very style.

This is now a possibility in America, with T-Mobile (the fourth and clearly smallest of the big 4 remaining nation-wide US mobile operators) and its 29 million subscribers, now looking hungrily at Sprint Nextel which is almost twice its size at 54 million subscribers and the third largest mobile operator in the USA. Combining the two would create America's biggest operator - and judging by the general satisfaction level and above-industry-average growth rates of T-Mobile, vs Sprint Nextel's disasterous year the past 12 months (following their idiotic "Sprint 1,000" marketing fiasco that resulted in the CEO, Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Financial Officer being fired) - you could bet your farm that the new company would be named simply T-Mobile.. Oh, the Sprint Nextel stock price is well under half from its peak, that is why this is suddenly financially feasible. And T-Mobile's parent, Deutsche Telecom is a wealthy German operator, with lots of Euros in its cash reserves, which buy lots of dollars these days..

And then there is the issue of GSM vs CDMA. T-Mobile network is on the GSM standard. Sprint before the Nextel merger was on CDMA and Nextel was on iDEN - all three are incompatible. Sprint Nextel has been migrating customers to CDMA. But the global standard is now GSM, and CDMA is the losing proposition on the technology front, with more than a dozen mobile operators/carriers around the world migrating customers from CDMA to the GSM (and/or WCDMA/UMTS and/or HSDPA) evolution path. This is also being seriously considered at Verizon - in fact they have pondered it for years already, and many suggest it will happen (migration from CDMA to the GSM evolution path at Verizon). AT&T with its iPhone is already on the GSM standard. So what do you think T-Mobile would do?

This would be a quick way to become the biggest carrier/operator in America. T-Mobile would inherit a deeply unsatisfied customer base, but if they played their cards right - this is such a wounded animal, that almost any changes by T-Mobile would be seen as improvements. Lets see how this pans out. I would not be surprised..

Original Source: Communities Dominate Brands