There is another carrier that might be available for the right price and that is UScellular. Back in August, Telephone & Data Systems (TDS), the company that owns a commanding 83% of the wireless provider, said it was exploring strategic alternatives which is M&A talk for “Someone please buy us out.” While nothing earth-shattering has emerged from the parent firm, TDS did say that the process is “active and ongoing.”
T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert
There were some positives for UScellular during Q3. The average revenue per user (ARPU) rose 2% to $51.11 in Q3 from $50.64 in Q2. USCellular CEO Laurent (L.T.) Therivel said that the increase in ARPU was due to the larger number of customers moving to higher flat-rate plans.
UScellular has a market capitalization of $3.84 billion which sounds like it could be doable for T-Mobile. However, T-Mobile is sitting on $70 billion in long-term debt and had slightly over $5 billion in cash available at the end of the third quarter. Unlike Sprint, which was sitting on a goldmine in 2.5GHz spectrum, it seems that the only attraction for T-Mobile here would be UScellular’s rural coverage.