Buying Is on Hold at T-Mobile

Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile wireless unit sees “no strategic need” to make acquisitions after Sprint Corp. and Cingular Wireless bought rivals, T-Mobile USA Chief Executive Robert Dotson said.

T-Mobile, the fourth-biggest U.S. wireless company, has stood by in the last year as Cingular purchased AT&T; Wireless Services Inc. and Sprint agreed to buy Nextel Communications Inc. for about $35 billion. Germany-based Deutsche Telekom bought T-Mobile, formerly known as VoiceStream Wireless Corp., for the same amount in 2001.

“The population in the U.S. can support a No. 4 company,” Dotson told reporters at T-Mobile USA’s headquarters in Seattle last week. “We will be at the bottom of cost structures of any other wireless carriers in the foreseeable future.”

T-Mobile USA, which says its costs to acquire a new customer are as much as 29% lower than those of a combined Sprint-Nextel, plans to spend $2.8 billion this year to expand and improve its own networks and has earmarked funds to buy more radio frequencies. Deutsche Telekom said this month that it had spent $256 million to buy 36 U.S. permits in a government auction.