A T-Mobile-Dish Deal Could be the Ultimate Marriage of Convenience

A deal between Dish and T-Mobile is akin to two people who hook up because they are the last ones left in the bar at closing time. Both had their eye on other combinations but saw their efforts foiled. And more than anything, neither company wants to go home alone. Plus, while not the perfect catch, each partner has its good parts.

T-Mobile is an aggressive, fast-growing upstart in wireless, while Dish has deep spectrum holdings. Together, they can offer a combination of services that neither was able to do solo. Both companies have long sought merger partners, with Dish having previously sought to buy Sprint, and T-Mobile having tried to sell itself to AT&T and to merge with Sprint. Dish was outmaneuvered by SoftBank, while regulators shot down T-Mobile’s deals with AT&T and Sprint. Dish had also approached rival DirecTV for a possible tie-up last year. A Dish-T-Mobile deal, though, is unlikely to encounter the same degrees of regulatory scrutiny that T-Mobile encountered in those prior efforts. A Dish deal would maintain four national wireless carriers and arguably strengthen the No. 4 wireless carrier while the other two transactions would have removed a competitor from the market.