A T-Mobile US Inc service outage, which kept thousands of customers from making calls or using data on Monday, is to be investigated by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
“The T-Mobile network outage is unacceptable,” FCC chairman Ajit Pai tweeted on Monday evening, saying that the agency would launch a probe into the matter. “We’re demanding answers — and so are American consumers.”
Voice and text services have been restored, T-Mobile network chief Neville Ray said in a Twitter post.
“These issues are now resolved,” T-Mobile chief executive officer Mark Sievert said in a statement timestamped 10:03pm Pacific Standard time on the company’s Web site. “We again apologize for any inconvenience.”
The problem came at an awkward time for T-Mobile. The company finally got government clearance a few months ago to acquire Sprint Corp, arguing that the two carriers could form a strong challenger to AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc.
T-Mobile is now the second-biggest US carrier — based on regular monthly subscribers — and it has vowed to build the best 5G network in the industry.
Sievert earlier in the day said that the carrier had hundreds of engineers and vendor partner staff working to resolve the outage.
Separately, Softbank Group Corp said it is considering the sale of its T-Mobile shares, confirming reports that the Japanese company is nearing a deal as part of its effort to sell about US$41 billion in assets.
Softbank said it might sell some of its stake through private placements or public offerings, adding that there is no assurance a final deal will be reached.
T-Mobile also confirmed Softbank’s plan and was not specific about the details, saying that Softbank was exploring “one or more monetization transactions” involving the wireless carrier’s stock.
People familiar with the matter last month said that Softbank was closing in on an agreement to sell about US$20 billion of its stock in T-Mobile, part of efforts to raise capital after record losses in its investment business.
“These transactions may include one or more of: private placements or public offerings; privately negotiated transactions with T-Mobile or one or more stockholders of T-Mobile, including Deutsche Telekom, or third parties,” T-Mobile said in a regulatory filing.
Softbank, which owns about 25 percent of T-Mobile US, is expected to sell a slice of that holding to Deutsche Telekom AG, giving the German co-owner a majority stake.
Softbank would then sell shares in a secondary offering to other investors and retain a smaller stake itself, a person familiar with the deliberations said previously.
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