What would a Sprint, T-Mobile merger mean for prepaid?

Sprint has made prepaid a priority. They have three separate arms: Boost Mobile, Virgin Mobile, and Common Cents Mobile. That has them fairly well positioned within the market. T-Mobile prepaid is also a popular service, though, and is currently helping compensate for losses on the postpaid end. Yet it doesn’t offer anything that is distinct from Sprint’s three-pronged attack. The first question, of course, is of how the two companies would handle the merger. Would they just roll with having two separate networks under the same brand? That would work until the LTE convergence. But ultimately, if this happens I can see T-Mobile being completely flushed and Sprint taking over. A few years ago this would have been a preposterous notion, but it appears that Sprint has recovered some of its reputation and is back on the rise. T-Mobile seems to be the victim of this. Considering Sprint’s prepaid prowess, I doubt T-Mobile’s services would survive. There’s already Boost, which has unlimited services, and Virgin Mobile, which offers a few monthly plans. Pay as you go is taken care of by Common Cents, which is cheaper than T-Mobile anyway. If these two brands do merge, I’d expect to see no more T-Mobile eventually. ]]>