T-Mobile may merge with MetroPCS

{mosads}MetroPCS is a regional carrier that offers a prepaid monthly service without a contract. It has 9.3 million subscribers, which would be combined with T-Mobile’s 33.2 million subscribers.

The merger would still leave T-Mobile behind third-place Sprint, which has about 56 million customers, and well behind industry leaders Verizon and AT&T. 

The deal would give T-Mobile access to MetroPCS’s airwave licenses as well as its next-generation LTE cell towers. T-Mobile is scrambling to catch up with the other national carriers since federal regulators killed its attempt to sell itself to AT&T last year.

The Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department would have to sign off on a merger between T-Mobile and MetroPCS, but the deal would be unlikely to raise the same competition concerns as the AT&T deal, which would have created the nation’s largest carrier.