Hold your horses, folks. Although recent reports have hinted that a Sprint and T-Mobile merger is gaining steam, there's actually little to support that.

Kyodo news agency reported Thursday that Deutsche Telekom AG, the parent company of T-Mobile, had agreed to a deal with SoftBank Corp., Sprint's parent company, for the acquisition of T-Mobile.

In reality, however, neither company has commented on the matter nor is there any evidence that a deal has been struck. Instead, as unnamed Reuters sources put it, there are still many hurdles to overcome, the biggest of which is U.S. regulatory agencies.

Both the FCC and the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust department have publically stated they are wary of allowing Sprint and T-Mobile to merge. The consolidation of the No. 3 and No. 4 carriers in the United States would reduce the number of major U.S. wireless market competitors to three from four. This, officials say, could end up hurting consumers in the long run. Approvals from the FCC and antitrust department are needed in order for any transaction to go through.

But Sprint and T-Mobile think otherwise. SoftBank chief executive and Sprint chairman Masayoshi Son has been aggressively stating his case for a takeover of T-Mobile over the past few months. Son cited the need for more resources in order to fight the juggernauts that are AT&T and Verizon (even with a combined customer base, Sprint and T-Mobile have less than AT&T alone).

"I brought the network war and price war (to Japan). I'd like to bring that to the States," Son said at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to industry officials in March. "I would like to provide an alternative to the oligopolistic situation that two-thirds of American households can only get access to one or two providers. I'd like to be a third alternative with 10 times the speed and lower price."

"We have the spectrum. We have the technology. But we need scale, efficiency to make an investment for the network," Son told reporters after his speech.

Eccentric T-Mobile CEO John Legere agrees as well. Many believe Legere will become head of the new Sprint and T-Mobile company if the deal goes through.

"If the government wants us to have a competitive environment, you are going to make sure that the duopoly doesn't use their prowess to crush the little guys and have this sub-1 GHz spectrum be moved all to them," Legere said in an interview on television show Bloomberg West earlier this year.

"We're all going to need better scale and capability. The question starts to be how do you take the maverick and supercharge it? We either need more spectrum and capability, a lot more investment, or we need consolidation."

Deutsche Telekom has said that it will keep a minority stake in T-Mobile if Sprint ends up taking over.

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