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Sprint Chairman Takes Case For T-Mobile Merger To The Public

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Masayoshi Son, SoftBank Corp. CEO and chairman of Overland Park-based Sprint Corp., promises lower prices and faster service — if he’s allowed to buy T-Mobile.

Son, who heads Sprint’s parent company SoftBank, says merging Sprint with T-Mobile would create a stronger competitor to the big guys, Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc.

The pitch hasn’t worked with federal regulators, so now Son’s going on TV, doing interviews, and speaking to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He’s promising a price war and much faster speeds if the deal goes through. Son says the U.S. economy now suffers from expensive and relatively slow mobile service.

“Only two things we need high speed, low price,” says Son. “Today it’s the opposite. Let’s change it.”

Son also says that technological advances on the horizon will increase wireless speeds allowing a combined Sprint and T-Mobile to compete with home broadband providers, in addition to wireless providers.

I’ve been at KCUR almost 30 years, working partly for NPR and splitting my time between local and national reporting. I work to bring extra attention to people in the Midwest, my home state of Kansas and of course Kansas City. What I love about this job is having a license to talk to interesting people and then crafting radio stories around their voices. It’s a big responsibility to uphold the truth of those stories while condensing them for lots of other people listening to the radio, and I take it seriously. Email me at frank@kcur.org or find me on Twitter @FrankNewsman.
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