According to several reports, but originating in a Wall Street Journal article, Sprint – the third largest US Wireless Carrier – is preparing to make a bid, somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 billion, to purchase T-Mobile – the fourth largest US Wireless Carrier. According to the Wall Street Journal article:

Sprint is studying regulatory concerns and could launch a bid in the first half of next year, the people said. A deal could be worth more than $20 billion, depending on the size of any stake in T-Mobile that Sprint tries to buy.

These regulatory concerns, namely from antitrust organizations, will be a major hurdle in any such bid. In August of 2011, the Antitrust Department of The US Justice Department shut down AT&T’s attempt to purchase T-Mobile for $39 billion.  However, that deal was all together different in that AT&T was, and is still, the second largest carrier.

Whereas AT&T stood to become the largest carrier in the 2011 deal, T-Mobile and Sprint combined, as they stand today, would be the third largest wireless carrier and a viable competitor to bot Verizon and AT&T. Again, according to the Wall Street Journal article:

Executives from Sprint and T-Mobile have argued publicly that the government should allow a combination of the two companies, as it would give them the scale to make the network investments and spectrum purchases needed to compete against Verizon Wireless and AT&T.

While, in theory, a combination of the two lesser carriers would be good thing for the consumer. However, as T-Mobile utilizes a GSM network and Sprint utilizes a CDMA network, there are bound to be technical barriers to a deal. There have been no official statements from either party, but we will update this article when more information is available.

(Image Via Androidauthority)