Masayoshi Son Presses to Turn Sprint Around

Nearly a year after the $22 billion SoftBank acquisition closed, Sprint is far from upsetting the US market. Instead, it is hemorrhaging customers amid a tricky network upgrade and stepped up competition from rivals.

It still is early in SoftBank's ownership of Sprint, and bigger changes in strategy and tactics could be coming. But smaller rival T-Mobile US beat Sprint to the punch, using SoftBank-like tactics of aggressive marketing and creative pricing to reverse years of subscriber losses and challenge market leaders Verizon and AT&T. Against the backdrop of that performance, Masayoshi Son now is pursuing his second big US wireless deal in less than a year, an acquisition of T-Mobile that would value the company around $32 billion, people familiar with the matter said. The diverging fortunes of the two companies highlight the risks for Sprint if the effort fails and the company is forced to stand alone, as well as the concerns of regulators who value the competitive spark that T-Mobile has brought to the highly concentrated industry.