by Jeff Moore
Very soon, the Sprint brand will be gone from the U.S. telecom market. "On August 2, we're combining our Sprint and T-Mobile brands to operate as one T-Mobile brand nationwide," T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert said on July 22.
This wasn't supposed to happen. At its height in March 2006, Sprint's market capitalization was $76 billion. This was in the aftermath of Sprint's $35 billion acquisition of a national competitor, Nextel, in
2005. As of 2005, Sprint was the third biggest U.S. carrier and Nextel was the fifth biggest. The deal also gave Sprint a chunk of the prepaid market via Nextel's Boost Mobile asset.
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