As T-Mobile reported its first-quarter earnings this week, the main question on most people’s lips was whether there’s any truth to reports that the carrier could merge with its parent company, Deutsche Telekom.

The question was put to T-Mobile CEO Srini Gopalan during the carrier’s earnings call this week, to which Gopalan said the telco won’t be commenting on such matters.

However, he did suggest that there has been some thinking behind the scenes around a potential merger.

“As a matter of policy, we do not comment on market rumors or speculation, nor is there anything specific to comment on anyway,” said Gopalan.

“However, the article has raised a lot of questions inbound on governance. We have looked into the governance, and what I have been told is hypothetically, if someone were to ever consider such a transaction reported in the article, that would specifically require a separate approval process by disinterested shareholders, what many of you refer to as majority of the minority.”

Deutsche Telekom previously regained its majority stake in T-Mobile back in 2023. The telco has had a stake in T-Mobile since 2001. The German giant’s stake in T-Mobile is currently 53 percent.

Bloomberg reported that a potential deal would create a corporate group that controls the operations of Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile, and would be jointly owned by the two companies’ current investors.

For the quarter itself, T-Mobile reported revenue of $23.1 billion, which was up 10.6 percent Year-on-Year (YoY).

The carrier reported that net income decreased 15 percent YoY to $2.5bn, though this included the impact of the company’s UScellular acquisition last year.

For the quarter, T-Mobile added 217,000 post-paid net account additions for broadband and mobile services, which was up five percent YoY, while average monthly post-paid service revenue earned per account rose 3.9 percent to $151.93.

Because of the better-than-expected performance, T-Mobile had raised its forecasts for post-paid account additions to between 950,000 and 1 million this year, up from a prior range of 900,000 to one million.

Hungry for more fiber

One of T-Mobile’s main headlines this week was once again centered around its fiber ambitions.

The carrier announced on Tuesday (April 28) that it will invest $2.7bn as part of two new fiber joint ventures.

This includes a 50/50 JV partnership with Oak Hill Capital to acquire and combine GoNetspeed and Greenlight Networks, and a separate 50/50 JV with Wren House to acquire i3 Broadband.

T-Mobile aims to reach 12 to 15 million households with fiber by the end of 2030. The carrier notably sealed its acquisition of Lumos last year as part of a JV with EQT Infrastructure, along with its fiber JV acquisition of Metronet a few months later.

By the end of the decade, the carrier expects to hit between three and four million fiber subscribers.

“We are not looking at a master plan on having fiber everywhere. We are looking geographically with each of the partners at where it makes sense to build—where we can create value out of these builds,” said André Almeida, chief broadband, enterprise & emerging business officer.

Almeida points out that the creation of fiber JVs has been successful for T-Mobile in the recent past, highlighting the carrier’s fiber JV acquisitions of Lumos and Metronet.

T-Mobile, Starlink unveil SuperBroadband offering

One of the other big announcements coming out of Seattle this week concerned T-Mobile’s ongoing partnership with SpaceX subsidiary, Starlink.

As part of this, T-Mobile unveiled SuperBroadband, which the carrier explains will combine its 5G Standalone network with Starlink’s broadband “to deliver ultimate redundancy, unmatched coverage, and simplified operations for businesses nationwide.”

According to T-Mobile, industry leaders across hospitality, retail, healthcare, and oil and gas sectors are already using SuperBroadband to simplify and strengthen the resiliency of their operations.

T-Mobile said the offering will provide businesses with “ultimate redundancy,” while it extends coverage to every zip code in the US.

The carrier adds that the service will be delivered as a fully managed, nationwide service that comes with a guarantee of 99.99 percent uptime.

“Integrating Starlink with T-Mobile 5G brings reliable, high-performance broadband to businesses with mission-critical operations where downtime costs thousands per hour,” said Jason Fritch, vice president of Starlink Enterprise Sales, SpaceX.

SuperBroadband plans start from $250 a month. This includes unlimited business 5G data, unlimited back-up Starlink data, enterprise-grade 5G equipment, the Starlink kit, and Installation, management, and monitoring.

T-Mobile paired with Starlink to launch its direct-to-device (D2D) satellite service, T-Satellite, across the US last year, following an agreement struck between the two companies in 2022 to cover dead spots from space.

Gopalan noted that the partnership with SpaceX has been strong during the earnings call, but did admit that usage of the service has been lower than expected.

“We are pleased with that. Most of the usage we are seeing is as a national backstop, and if anything, courtesy of the great network that [T-Mobile CFO] Dr. Saw has built, we are seeing a lot less usage than we were originally thinking,” he said. “But it is a great complementary product. As you look at the future, we are seeing multiple other space providers show up.”