T-Mobile buying Suncom for $1.6 billion
by Chris Ziegler 
posted Sep 17th 2007 at 11:33AM
Well, we guess we can put aside any intermittent chatter of Deutsche Telekom losing interest in the US market (for the time being, anyway). The German conglomerate has announced that its US subsidiary, T-Mobile, is acquiring regional GSM carrier Suncom for some $1.6 billion plus $800 million in existing debt obligations. As the smallest national carrier in the country, T-Mobile's clearly looking to increase its footprint and flex some muscle here against its larger adversaries; if everything clears the usual regulatory hurdles, the two can expect to take on the world some time in the first half of 2008.[Via Phone Scoop]
Filed under: T-Mobile
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
PDXMatt @ Sep 17th 2007 1:49PM
About time.
Keynone @ Sep 17th 2007 3:04PM
I knew it was going to happen sometime when T-Mobile changed their roaming agreements in NC and SC to be Suncom only, but then changed back after the outcry from T_Mobile customers in that area.
med1320 @ Sep 17th 2007 3:34PM
Pretty cool! I travel loads to Puerto Rico and Suncom becomes the carrier.
Donald @ Sep 17th 2007 4:21PM
Surprise factor 0. T-Mobile needs this in order to gain a Carolinas presence.
The D Train @ Sep 17th 2007 5:15PM
They'll be hard pressed to gain too much ground considering the foothold AT&T already has here in the Carolinas. I know specifically in Wilmington when Verizon Wireless launched our stores were all dead. We just opened up another one on the main drag through to the beach, and I can't imagine it will have much impact. Suncom is greatly disapointing in the NC areas that I had taken in many months ago.
The only thing tmo has going for it, is that people here are cheap, tmo is cheap, and that will appeal to the low income areas of the carolinas.
Chuck @ Sep 24th 2007 1:02PM
VZW has perfectly decent coverage in the Carolinas. And Tmob will be welcome here, especially with my 5 Faves and the Homespot VOIP thingy.
Jeff @ Sep 17th 2007 7:02PM
yada yada yada....I feel like T-Mo is really beating around the bush. Lets talk 3g, not new mediocre phones and buy outs. Its time to shiznit or get off the pot. Just had to vent a little bit.
Adrian @ Sep 17th 2007 8:06PM
Wasn't Suncom once a part of at&t?!?!?! Yeah I know it was cause I was a costumer!!! Damn T-Mobile!!!!!!
egoviri @ Sep 17th 2007 10:36PM
Suncom still exists in NC, SC and I believe another state. AT&T basically only bought Suncom in some areas such as Virginia.
Ricardo @ Sep 18th 2007 10:24PM
Well as a resident of Puerto Rico i really hope they bring all there phones here. I would love to have a dash.
Fletcher @ Sep 19th 2007 8:22AM
It will bring the whole line of phones there, as well as the my faves service and the hot spot at home service,
1Time @ Sep 19th 2007 3:23PM
I'm a Suncom customer and I'm hoping this acquisition is mostly a good thing, except recent google queries on T-Mobile seem to indicate that they have recently banned 3rd party J2ME (.jar) applications on their phones. A number of T-Mobile's customers have complained in forums that their Gmail, Gmap, Migg33+ (IM app), Opera Mini, just stopped working. So if you only use your phone for calling and text messaging, then you should be fine. But if you like to install useful java web applications to expand the purpose of your phone then T-Mobile might not be ideal. I would suggest googling on "j2me and tmobile" and you should pull up the same sites that I found discussing this.
michelle @ Oct 1st 2007 4:45PM
Does this mean they will become sun mobile? Ok so that was a bad joke. I hope this makes suncom a better cell phone provider, i have thought long and hard about leaving suncom lately because of their sorry service.
Kyle @ Dec 1st 2007 6:58PM
Im a suncom customer and no matter what when my contract is up im gone suncom has sorry service and just cause t mobile bought them doesnt mean the service will get better ill pay more for better service.