Sprint Takeover Bid for T-Mobile Looking Less Likely:

USA based Sprint is reportedly cooling on a possible bid for its smaller rival T-Mobile as regulators are said to be worried about the deal.

Antitrust officials have recently expressed strong sentiments against a deal publicly, causing Sprint to review its plans, theWall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Sprint Chairman Masayoshi Son and Chief Executive Dan Hesse have met with various regulatory officials in recent weeks but were said to have been surprised at the level of hostility to the deal being expressed, which was far greater than they had expected.

Bill Baer, head of the Justice Department's Antitrust Division reiterated a general wariness toward wireless consolidation in a speech to the New York State Bar Association.

While the regulators are said to be concerned that the market could end up consolidating into three large players, Sprint and T-Mobile USA are themselves said to be worried that they lack the scale necessary to compete with the big two -- AT&T and Verizon -- effectively leaving the market as a duopoly.

Sprint Offers ZTE Tablet for Just $30:

USA based Sprint has released a ZTE tablet that it is able to offer for US$30, subject to the customer taking out a two-year contract with the mobile network.

The ZTE Optik 2 is a revamped version of its similarly named predecessor, although the specifications do not appear to have substantively changed over the past couple of years since the original device was released.

The main difference between the older and newer model is that the $100 price has fallen to $30 instead.

Unusually for a new product offered by Sprint, it wont work on the operator's LTE network.

The tablet comes with a 7-inch screen offering 1024x600 resolution and a 1.2Gh Quad-core Qualcomm chipset.

US Networks Agree to Start Unlocking Mobile Phones:

The USA's largest networks have taken steps to forestall legislation and agreed to voluntarily start unlocking phones, subject to conditions.

AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular and Verizon Wireless agreed to adopt a voluntary set of six principles for unlocking of consumers' mobile phones and tablets.

Before 2013, users didn't need permission to manually unlock a phone themselves, but a decision by the Librarian of Congress made it a copyright issue and effectively banned the practice.

There are ongoing bipartisan efforts in the U.S. House and Senate to pass a permanent fix to the law, so the voluntary agreement is likely to be a short-term measure.

CTIA President and CEO Steve Largent warned though that "It is important that consumers know that unlocking devices may not necessarily mean full interoperability since devices that work on one provider's network may not be technologically compatible with another wireless provider's network."

The statement from the CTIA did not outline what the six principles would be for unlocking phones, and they still need to be formally approved by the networks and the trade group.