T-Mobile and Brookings Municipal Utilities have reached a definitive agreement under which the carrier will acquire BMU’s Sprint-branded wireless operating assets. The network provides wireless and data services to about 14,000 customers in South Dakota and Iowa.
No financial details were included for the deal, which includes the wireless network, retail stores and PCS spectrum. It is expected to close during the first quarter.
Brookings, which is headquartered in the South Dakota city of the same name, serves about 14,000 subscribers in the southeastern South Dakota communities Sioux Falls, Watertown, and Brookings and Sioux City, which is in western Iowa.
“Once fully integrated, we will expand our retail footprint in the area and bring T-Mobile’s award-winning approach to service to these customers,” T-Mobile President and CSO Mike Sievert said in a press release about the T-Mobile Brookings deal.
BMU is not the first Sprint-affiliated asset T-Mobile has tried to acquire. Last August, the carrier announced the acquisition of the wireless assets of the Shenandoah Telecommunications Company, a publicly held wireless and wireline carrier with a 1.1 million subscriber footprint in Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
The company – also known as Shentel — had a two-decade old agreement with Sprint that included an option for Sprint to acquire the Shentel wireless assets. T-Mobile plans to exercise that right, which it acquired when it got Sprint.
T-Mobile and Shentel could not settle on a purchase price when the agreement was announced, however. In November, Tmo News, an unofficial blog focused on T-Mobile, reported that a formula for a purchase price has been reached and that the deal now is expected to close during the second quarter.
