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T-Mobile and MetroPCS enter merger agreement: Impact of deal on T-Mobile's Frisco office not known
T-Mobile’s regional office in Frisco, seen above, is the company’s second-largest office in the nation. Earlier this year, T-Mobile laid off 615 positions in the city. Photo by Kelsey Kruzich.
By Anthony Tosie, atosie@starlocalnews.com
Editor's Note: This article was originally published at 1:36 p.m. on Oct. 3. It has been updated to clarify that MetroPCS stockholders will retain stock in the proposed new company.
T-Mobile and Richardson-based MetroPCS announced this morning that the two companies have entered into a merger agreement.
MetroPCS has agreed to acquire all of T-Mobile's stock and provide Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile's parent company, with a 74 percent stake in a new, combined company. The remaining 26 percent will be retained by MetroPCS stockholders, although the new company will be taken public and sold on a U.S. stock exchange.
As part of the deal, the corporate headquarters of the new company will be based out of T-Mobile's current headquarters in Bellevue, Wash. A joint press release from MetroPCS and T-Mobile said the new company will "retain a significant presence in Dallas."
MetroPCS shareholder approval is still needed to complete the merger, as are regulatory approvals. If all requirements are met, the companies expect to close the transaction in the first half of 2013.
On a conference call this morning, John Legere, T-Mobile president and chief executive, said the company will seek to expand its coverage in important markets, including the Dallas area.
"Together, we will have an increased network density, coverage and capacity in major metropolitan areas such as New York, Los Angeles and Dallas," said Legere, who will also serve as president and chief executive of the new company. "In fact, the combined company will enable a deeper LTE network deployment [with high-speed wireless service] in many, many metropolitan areas."
What impact -- if any -- the proposed merger will have on T-Mobile's regional office in Frisco is not known.
That office is the company's second largest; only T-Mobile's headquarters is larger. In 2011, T-Mobile was the second-leading employer in Frisco with 1,500 employees, although it laid off 615 positions in the city earlier this year.
Requests for comment from a T-Mobile representative regarding the impact of the proposed merger on T-Mobile's Frisco office went unanswered.
The proposed company will have about 42.5 million subscribers, Deutsche Telekom said. T-Mobile's customer base will account for about 33 million of those subscribers.
T-Mobile's Dallas-area employees have been at a corporate event at the Sheraton Downtown Dallas Hotel since Tuesday morning.
At that event, Jon Freier, regional vice president and general manager of the Dallas area for T-Mobile, said the wireless provider has improved its presence in Denton and Collin counties with improved wireless coverage.
"We have about 1,000 cell sites across the Dallas area," Freier said. "Dallas is one of our biggest and fastest-growing markets, and we're working as fast as we can to get the network to become faster and more reliable. Everything from Frisco to Flower Mound, Plano and the majority of the Dallas area is now 4G."
T-Mobile plans to open three new stores in Denton and Collin counties in the coming months, Freier said.
The proposed merger isn't the first for T-Mobile in the past year.
In 2011, Dallas-based AT&T announced plans to purchase T-Mobile and merge the two companies. When AT&T abandoned the planned merger after it was unable to get the regulatory approval necessary, it was forced to pay a breakup fee to T-Mobile.
That breakup fee -- $3 billion in cash and $1 billion worth of the wireless spectrum AT&T owned -- has since allowed T-Mobile to expand its 4G and LTE coverage in the United States, including the Dallas area.
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