T-Mobile CEO John Legere talked up the acquisition with characteristic aplomb in a company press release. “The combination of T-Mobile and MetroPCS creates an even stronger disruptive force in the US wireless market,” he declared. “Together, as America’s un-carrier, we’ll continue our legacy of marketplace innovation by tearing up the old playbook and rewriting the rules of wireless to benefit consumers.”

What exactly does Legere mean by “tearing up the old playbook”? No contracts, for starters. While its network infrastructure transitions to LTE, T-Mobile is embracing MetroPCS’s contract-free, unlimited model, a stark contrast to the metered service packages available from Verizon and AT&T.

As for the competition, TMUS is aiming for the top. Wearing a hot pink T-shirt emblazoned with T-Mobile’s logo, Legere dismissed Sprint as a credible threat while speaking to reporters on May 1 on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange, explaining that “the more likely target for us is the one that we’ve got straight in our headlights, which is AT&T, and I think by us focusing on them, the big winner is consumers.”

Legere is nothing if not entertaining, but for a company that bleeds prepaid customers like a stuck pig in a shark tank—at 6 percent its prepaid churn rate is the highest of any MNO, and nearly twice the market average—adding nine million customers without addressing the issues that cause such high churn will only postpone T-Mobile’s inevitable slide into oblivion. It’s possible that converging its service plans with MetroPCS, a wholly prepaid carrier, will prove effective; T-Mobile’s recent addition of the iPhone, which became available to MetroPCS customers after May 1, can only help. High-speed, contract-free, unlimited, low-cost iPhone service is a compelling reason for customers to choose the “un-carrier,” but whether or not TMUS becomes a truly disruptive force in the market is yet to be seen.

Sprint and SoftBank

The second-biggest story in the rapidly consolidating US wireless market involves Sprint and the Japanese CSP SoftBank. Last October SoftBank made public its intent to acquire 70 percent ownership of Sprint Nextel Corporation; the other 30 percent of shares would be publicly traded, as shown in figure 3.

Source: SoftBank

If the deal is approved by regulators and shareholders, Dan Hesse will remain in place as Sprint's CEO, and Overland Park, Kansas, will remain the company’s headquarters, but 7 of the 10 members of its current board of directors will exit.

Sprint was first to the field with 4G, hawking its WiMAX service long before Verizon and AT&T began pitching 4G LTE. However, now that the industry has embraced LTE as the most favored flavor of 4G, Sprint has to shift gears, and SoftBank offers an on-ramp to innovation, Hesse said in a statement last fall. “Our management team is excited to work with SoftBank [and] learn from their successful deployment of LTE in Japan as we build out our advanced LTE network, improve the customer experience and continue the turnaround of our operations.”

SoftBank has expertise in next-gen networks, not to mention the strategic savvy to compete with a duopoly: in 2006 it purchased Vodafone Japan, allowing it to go head to head with the country’s two leading telcos, NTT Docomo and KDDI. “As we have proven in Japan, we have achieved a V-shaped earnings recovery in the acquired mobile business and grown dramatically by introducing differentiated products and innovative services to an incumbent-led market,” said SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son in a statement to the press. “Our track record of innovation, combined with Sprint’s strong brand and local leadership, provides a constructive beginning toward creating a more competitive American mobile market.”