For the quarter ending March 31, T-Mobile reported a 7 percent dip in revenue from a year earlier.

Adjusted earnings, excluding interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of $1.2 billion was also down 7.5 percent from a year earlier, though that figure was up from the fourth quarter.

However, T-Mobile has been pretty darn busy since the quarter ended — adding the iPhone, doing away with phone subsidies and closing its deal to acquire MetroPCS. The company is also spending billions to build an LTE network as it tries to catch up to its larger rivals.

T-Mobile had announced some quarterly metrics back in April, when it noted that it added 579,000 subscribers in the three-month period, with contract subscriber losses for the quarter narrowing to 199,000.

“Our first quarter operating metrics and financial results are showing positive impact from the changes we began making in the fourth quarter,” CEO John Legere said in a statement, adding that the company added T-Mobile branded customers for the first time since early 2009. “Things only get more exciting from here, having brought T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS together to create the wireless industry’s value leader and premier challenger.”

“Don’t be confused,” Legere told AllThingsD. “We’re not running two companies. We are clearly going to be one integrated company that uses two brands to go to market.”

As for the iPhone coming to MetroPCS, Legere said it’s a possibility, but not a foregone conclusion.

“The answer to that is not ‘No,’” Legere said, but added, “It’s not imminent; I think that’s safe to say.”

There are two big factors. One is how T-Mobile decides it wants to position the two brands and manage its marketing.

“It’s also something that involves Apple,” Legere said, but added that “we’ve started those dialogues with our partners.”

Beyond the iPhone, though, T-Mobile plans to move quickly to introduce new devices as early as next month that bear the MetroPCS brand but run on T-Mobile’s network.

Even as it maintains the MetroPCS brand, T-Mobile wants to transition customers quickly to T-Mobile’s network. That’s critical to minimizing the time spent operating incompatible networks and to allowing T-Mobile more efficient use of its spectrum.

“This is about customer migration, not network integration,” Legere said, reiterating a point CTO Neville Ray made in an interview shortly after the deal was announced last October.

Offering MetroPCS handsets on the T-Mobile network also allows that brand to move into new cities. Legere said the company is working through a double-digit list of cities and plans to aggressively target new markets this year, though he didn’t say whether the first new cities would come in the second or third quarter.

“We’re deciding those cities this week,” Legere said. “We’re going to move fast and big.”

Meanwhile, Legere also said that T-Mobile is making good progress on its “uncarrier” approach that began last month, noting that both its prepaid and postpaid businesses are ahead of expectations, though he didn’t give specifics. He also said the company’s iPhone sales have exceeded expectations, though again he declined to give hard numbers.

Legere did say the company is on track for its goal of shifting from losing postpaid customers to gaining customers at some point this year and being positive for the full 2014.

With the deal done, the company will turn to the task of rapidly integrating the prepaid carrier into its existing business and technology roadmap.

The company has been working on integration plans for months and aims to hit the ground running. CTO Neville Ray promised that the company is well aware of what happened to Sprint when it bought Nextel and is taking pains to avoid that fate.

T-Mobile plans to keep MetroPCS as a separate brand targeting different demographics. That means operating separate stores and maintaining both brands. Plus, T-Mobile has the opportunity to now expand the brand into markets that MetroPCS had missed out on due to a lack of spectrum.

However, T-Mobile hopes to quickly start selling new and renewing MetroPCS customers on a new crop of devices that run on T-Mobile’s spectrum.

“This isn’t about integrating these two networks,” Ray said in an October interview. “It’s about moving MetroPCS over to a bigger and stronger converged network.”

Meanwhile, T-Mobile has made a number of big moves separate from the MetroPCS deal. Last month it announced a plan to scrap phone subsidies, eliminate long-term contracts and, at long last add the iPhone to its lineup.

And the company has spent $4 billion modernizing its network, moving to more widely adopted spectrum and adopting LTE.

In acquiring MetroPCS, T-Mobile parent company Deutsche Telekom also turns T-Mobile USA into a publicly traded company, albeit one still three-quarters owned by the German telecommunications firm. (T-Mobile will trade under the ticker symbol “TMUS” on the New York Stock Exchange.)

That said, one big thing hasn’t changed. T-Mobile remains the No. 4 U.S. carrier and even with MetroPCS, it will significantly trail its top three rivals in all measures of scale.

Update: T-Mobile’s investor relations website has been updated to reflect the combination as having taken place, with its executive leadership team updated to list Thomas Keys as Executive VP and operating chief of the MetroPCS business unit. Meanwhile, MetroPCS’ investor relations page now points to T-Mobile.

The deal is expected to close May 1.

T-Mobile agreed last year to merge with MetroPCS, creating a publicly traded company of which Deutsche Telekom would own 74%.

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Last week Deutsche Telekom sweetened its bid for the wireless carrier, after MetroPCS faced opposition from shareholders unhappy with the deal’s debt component in particular.

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In what it dubbed its “best and final offer” for MetroPCS, Deutsche Telekom reduced the loans that it would be owed by $3.8 billion to $11.2 billion, and also said it would lower the interest rate on the debt.

“This lower rate reflects the new capital structure of the combined company, the improved capital markets environment in recent months, and the interest rate level of MetroPCS newly issued USD 3.5 billion of bonds priced in March,” Deutsche Telekom said.

Other terms of the deal would remain the same, Deutsche Telekom said, allowing a scheduled vote by MetroPCS shareholders to proceed as scheduled. Regulators in the U.S. have already approved the deal.

Under the deal, MetroPCS shareholders would get $1.5 billion in cash and a 26 percent stake in the merged company. Deutsche Telekom would also control the board of the combined company.

Certain shareholders, as well as a key proxy advisory firm, had been urging a vote against the deal unless better terms were offered.

The German telecom company is trying to save a deal to merge its U.S. unit, T-Mobile USA, with MetroPCS in the face of heavy shareholder opposition over the terms. The new terms would likely include a reduction in the amount of debt that will be transferred to the new company, a change some MetroPCS shareholders have sought, the people said.

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The recommendation by Institutional Shareholder Services, which advises big shareholders how to vote in corporate elections, gives a boost to funds including Paulson & Co. that oppose the deal.

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And the bulk of the board will be made up of folks associated with T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom.

Both exiting DT chief Rene Obermann and incoming CEO Timotheus Hottges will be on the combined company board, with Hottges serving as Chairman.

T-Mobile CEO John Legere will also be on the board, along with Deutsche Telekom executives Raphael Kubler and Thorsten Langheim.

Two current MetroPCS directors will also be on the board.

The deal has gotten approval from U.S. regulators but still needs the nod from MetroPCS shareholders.

In its decision (PDF), the FCC stated that the merger would serve the public interest and would not result in “competitive or other public interest harms.”

“With today’s approval, America’s mobile market continues to strengthen, moving toward robust competition and revitalized competitors,” said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski in a separate statement. “Today’s action will benefit millions of American consumers and help the U.S maintain the global leadership in mobile it has regained in recent years.”

Among the benefits outlined by the FCC were the facilitation of LTE deployment, development of a more robust national network and expansion of MetroPCS service into new markets.

The Department of Justice also gave the merger the green light earlier this month. The deal now hinges on approval from MetroPCS shareholders, which may prove to be the biggest hurdle yet. Two of the carrier’s shareholders, P. Schoenfeld Asset Management and Paulson & Co., plan to vote against the merger.

Today, MetroPCS CEO Roger Linquist sent a letter to stockholders urging them to approve the deal in the vote, scheduled for April 12.

T-Mobile first announced its plan to acquire MetroPCS in early October. Under the terms of the deal, MetroPCS shareholders will get $1.5 billion in cash and a 26 percent stake in the combined company.

Obermann will take over as Ziggo’s chief executive Jan. 1, following the planned retirement of current head Bernard Dijkhuizen.

“After 15 happy years at Deutsche Telekom, I am very pleased to join Ziggo,” Obermann said in a statement. “This opportunity fulfills my strong wish as an entrepreneur to move closer to operational activities and to be involved in a fast changing world of offering products and services in media and entertainment.”

Obermann has presided over a number of big moves at the company’s U.S. subsidiary, T-Mobile USA, including the failed bid to be acquired by AT&T, as well as more recent moves to merge with MetroPCS, add Apple products to its lineup and build an LTE network.

Deutsche Telekom said that CFO Timotheus Höttges will take over as CEO, effective Jan. 1.

“By 2014, we expect to halt the decline in revenues and start growing again,” Höttges said in a statement. “Therefore, we will invest heavily primarily in our networks in Germany, but also in those in the USA, to secure the future of our company.”

He also helped recruit new T-Mobile U.S. chief John Legere after the departure of Philipp Humm last year.

In addition to building out its LTE network, taking out ads punching back at AT&T and completing its deal to merge with MetroPCS, it seems the No. 4. U.S. carrier is also prepping layoffs, though it is keeping quiet on the details.

The cutbacks are expected to hit as early as tomorrow and could result in more than 100 job losses, according to the Seattle Times, which first reported the impending layoffs.

A T-Mobile representative declined to comment.

The timing of the cuts comes just as it appears the merger deal has passed the final hurdles. MetroPCS noted on Tuesday that the federal antitrust review period has ended, and the company has slated an April 12 meeting for its shareholders to approve the deal.

Although some jobs will no doubt be cut as part of the deal, T-Mobile is expected to keep much of MetroPCS’ separate brand and large retail presence even as it works to quickly transition MetroPCS customers to devices that run on the T-Mobile network.

Ah, how times have changed.

Now the two companies are spending big bucks to take potshots at one another. AT&T placed newspaper ads last week insisting that its smaller rival drops more calls. On Wednesday, T-Mobile fired back with ads of its own, suggesting that AT&T is staying up nights worrying about its little company.

“We love a good scrap, especially when the winner is the consumer,” said Mike Sievert, T-Mobile’s chief marketing officer (and, once upon a time, an AT&T wireless executive himself).

But while Sievert and T-Mobile’s marketing team prep ads, T-Mobile is also working on a new network that it hopes will make it a more serious longer-term competitor.

After trailing all its major rivals in building an LTE network, T-Mobile is preparing a rapid nationwide deployment this year, expecting to cover more than a third of the U.S. population by mid-year and reach 200 million people by the end of the year.

And, at long last, T-Mobile has said it will begin selling Apple products, filling the biggest hole in its product lineup.

“We’re feeling really confident,” T-Mobile engineering VP Mark McDiarmid said in an interview this week.

T-Mobile plans to offer the 4G LTE network alongside its existing HSPA+ network, which it has also dubbed 4G. But after years of touting how HSPA+ can be nearly as fast in some real-world scenarios, the company is now proudly showing test numbers that show just how much faster LTE will be, especially when uploading data.

McDiarmid has plenty of work to do, though. For now, T-Mobile has yet to turn on its LTE network for customers anywhere, though it has things ready to go in Las Vegas and Kansas City as soon as the company is ready to sell devices and make an announcement.

The company also has other technical battles on the horizon, including merging its operations with MetroPCS, once that deal is completed later this year. The move will give the new T-Mobile the spectrum it needs, along with greater scale, but will also be a fair bit of work, given that MetroPCS and T-Mobile are based on different network technologies.

In the meantime, McDiarmid said, he is happy just to see the company’s name staying in print — even if it is in ads from its rival.

“I was kind of excited to see our name printed so boldly,” he said.

The No. 4 U.S. carrier said it managed to add 61,000 total customers for the quarter, as an increase in prepaid customers offset the losses in the traditional business.

Total revenue for the quarter was $4.9 billion, up sequentially from the prior quarter, but down 5.2 percent from a year ago. Operating income before certain expenses was down 15 percent sequentially, and 25 percent year on year.

T-Mobile said it is looking forward to the closure of its MetroPCS merger, expected in the first half of the year, and to the ability to start selling Apple gear sometime in 2013.

The carrier, which closed some call centers in a cost-cutting move last year, said it will continue to seek opportunities to reduce its expenses.

“T-Mobile will continue to look for opportunities to reduce overhead and other operational costs without adversely impacting its customer experience and network operations,” the company said. This includes reevaluating the company’s cost structure and eliminating initiatives that do not fit the “un-carrier” value proposition and business model.

The company said it is speeding up its effort to catch up to rivals in offering LTE, saying it expected to reach 100 million people by midyear, and more than 200 million by the end of the year. Its network is already ready in Las Vegas and Kansas City, Mo.

In a letter to its stock owners, MetroPCS urged shareholders to cast a yellow ballot in favor of the deal, and ignore the white “no” ballots being solicited by a dissident shareholder.

“After a multi-year, thorough review of MetroPCS’ options, with the assistance of independent financial and legal advisors, the MetroPCS board determined that this proposed combination is the best strategic alternative for our stockholders,” the company said in its letter.

MetroPCS shareholders will receive an aggregate of $1.5 billion in cash ($4.06 per share), along with a 26 percent stake in the combined company.

T-Mobile has expressed confidence it can make the deal pay off, even allowing for the fact that the two companies today use different network technologies.

MetroPCS also announced its fourth-quarter results Tuesday, posting a 65 percent drop in net income, along with a loss for the year of more than 450,000 subscribers.

The new smartphone plans start at $60 a month for unlimited talk and text messages and 500 megabytes of data. You can also choose from a $70-a-month plan, which includes unlimited talk and text and two gigabytes of data. (Verizon charges overage fees if you go over your allotted amount of data for the month — five cents per megabyte or $20 for 1GB extra.)

It’s important to note that these new plans are only available with the carrier’s 3G smartphones. Compatible devices include the iPhone 4S, HTC Droid Incredible 2, Samsung Illusion and BlackBerry Curve 9310.

On the one hand, the new plans are a welcome addition to Verizon, which prior to this only offered an $80 monthly prepaid plan for unlimited voice, text and 1GB of data.

On the other hand, the new plans are quite expensive when compared to the prepaid competition.

MetroPCS, for example, offers prepaid plans starting at $40 per month for unlimited talk, text and 500MB of 4G LTE data, or $50 for 2GB of 4G data. Virgin Mobile has a $55 monthly plan that includes unlimited talk, text and 3G/4G data.

And a new crop of prepaid carriers is popping up, including Ting, Republic Wireless and Voyager Mobile, which are shaking things up with low monthly plans without annual contracts, albeit with some restrictions, such as limited handset selection.

Dealing with slower, older phones or limited selection is one thing when the plans are cheap enough, but it’s pretty hard to justify at Verizon’s current prices.

Verizon’s new prepaid plans are available starting today.

On Monday, MetroPCS released its latest subscriber reports, and they are, in a word, abysmal. For its fourth quarter, the company posted a net loss of 93,237 wireless subscribers. And that gruesome number brought total subscriber losses for 2012 to around 459,936. MetroPCS ended the year with about 8.9 million subscribers. Quite a change from 2011, which ended with 9.4 million.

MetroPCS’s subscriber results were well below the Street’s expectations, and the company’s stock is being hammered as a result. Shares are down around 2 percent as I write this.

“This is the first time MetroPCS has lost subscribers on a net basis in Q4, which is typically its second strongest quarter behind Q1, and marks the company’s third consecutive quarter of net subscriber losses,” UBS analyst John Hodulik said in a research note. “We believe this underscores the urgency with which the company pursued merger partners before reaching a deal with T-Mobile in October.”

“T-Mobile USA has entered into an agreement with Apple to bring products to market together next year,” Deutsche Telekom said in a press statement. An Apple spokeswoman confirmed the deal but declined to offer further details.

T-Mobile has been taking a number of steps to make its U.S. network more iPhone friendly.

The carrier is investing billions in a move to first make its 3G network iPhone compatible and then to deploy a next-generation LTE network sometime next year. Along with that, the company has recently stepped up an effort to get existing iPhone owners to bring their devices over to T-Mobile’s network.

T-Mobile is also in the process of acquiring prepaid carrier MetroPCS.

“Hesitation now means playing catch-up later. We are investing in the future — with resolve and a clear strategy,” Deutsche Telekom Chairman René Obermann said Thursday in announcing a variety of moves his company is making across the globe.

T-Mobile indicated the moves in the U.S. and elsewhere will be pricey in the short term.

“We are going against the flow with our high investments in these times of economic challenges — because we have worked hard to establish sound balance sheet ratios and now have the necessary leeway,” CFO Timotheus Höttges said in a statement.

The company plans capital expenses next year of $4.7 billion in the U.S. with around $3 billion in such expenses in the two following years. That’s up from an average of $2.7 billion in capital expenses the last few years.

And while it isn’t breaking out the Apple deal in any meaningful way, getting an iPhone will no doubt add substantially to the cost T-Mobile must spend in acquiring each new customer as such devices typically come with a high subsidy for contract plans.

T-Mobile would be the last of the Big 4 U.S. carriers to get the iPhone, with Sprint, Verizon and AT&T all offering both iPads and iPhones.

Shares of the pay-as-you-go wireless carrier have been volatile as speculation continues over whether Sprint will make an superior offer to MetroPCS’s acquisition by Deutsche Telekom AG’s T-Mobile USA.

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MetroPCS is expected to file a proxy on its sale to Deutsche Telekom AG’s T-Mobile USA to the Securities and Exchange Commission in coming days, with a Monday deadline.

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The No. 4 U.S. carrier said it lost 492,000 contract customers in the third quarter. That’s down slightly from the 557,000 it lost in the prior quarter, but more than the 389,000 it lost a year ago. The company blamed the iPhone 5 launch in part for the continued defections.

With the addition of Sprint last year, all three larger rivals now sell Apple’s phone.

The company saw its total revenue drop 6.4 percent, to $4.9 billion, as higher device sales partly offset a larger 8.7 percent drop in service revenue.

T-Mobile is hoping to shore up its business and improve its long-term position with a pending deal to merge with MetroPCS.

The “special Webcast” is slated for 1 am PT Monday and, sleep be damned, AllThingsD will have live coverage. (Sprint has updated its Web site, and is now pointing people to a SoftBank press conference in Japan being carried on Ustream.)

The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that SoftBank and Sprint were nearly ready with a $20 billion deal that would give the Japanese company a majority stake in the No. 3 U.S. cellular carrier.

While the deal is expected, among the open questions are whether SoftBank will also grab a larger stake in Clearwire, and if it is eyeing further acquisitions, potentially including T-Mobile USA, which is itself in the process of trying to buy rival MetroPCS.

The No. 3 U.S. wireless carrier said the discussions are about a “substantial investment by SoftBank,” but offered few other details.

“Although there can be no assurances that these discussions will result in any transaction or on what terms any transaction may occur, such a transaction could involve a change of control of Sprint,” Sprint said in a statement. “Sprint does not intend to comment further unless and until an agreement is reached.”

The Wall Street Journal and other media reported earlier Thursday that the two companies were in talks.

Sprint shares have risen following reports of the talks, but Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett said there are too many unknowns about a deal, including the size and value of the investment, whether it is an all-cash deal, and whether SoftBank will be assuming any of Sprint’s debt.

“With all that said, it is highly (highly) speculative to assign any valuation to the offer,” Moffett said in a research note.

Investors seemed willing to bid up Sprint shares, though, with the stock changing hands in morning trading at $5.97, up 93 cents, or more than 18 percent.

Sprint’s talks with SoftBank follow a somewhat similar pattern to last week’s events, which saw Deutsche Telekom confirm its talks with MetroPCS. Those two companies announced a deal the next day, though it isn’t clear whether Sprint’s talks with SoftBank are that far along.

It was reported that Sprint was mulling its own renewed bid for MetroPCS. Sprint had been looking at MetroPCS earlier this year, but never got board approval for a deal.

T-Mobile’s network has evolved from the type of system used by AT&T while MetroPCS has historically relied on a CDMA network similar to those used by Verizon and Sprint.

That has some analysts and investors worried that the combined company could face the kind of hurdles that Sprint saw in the wake of its Nextel deal — a combination that, years later, still forces the company to operate two incompatible networks.

But T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray says the key is that both companies have been moving toward a similar next-generation LTE network. Indeed, Ray says the combined spectrum will allow the company to offer a much stronger network in key cities than the two carriers ever could have done solo.

The key, he said, is that T-Mobile plans to quickly migrate MetroPCS customers to phones that use T-Mobile’s network.

“This isn’t about integrating these two networks,” he said in an interview Friday. “It’s about moving MetroPCS over to a bigger and stronger converged network.”

With Nextel, Sprint acquired a set of customers dependent on features that it couldn’t match on its own network. But Ray says there is no feature MetroPCS customers are used to that T-Mobile can’t immediately match on its own network.

From the day the merger takes effect, T-Mobile plans to start selling phones that use the MetroPCS brand but run on its network technology, with a goal to fully migrate users to its network within a couple of years, eventually decommissioning the CDMA network to free up more spectrum for LTE.

Ray said the hardest part will be moving MetroPCS customers over to T-Mobile’s network as quickly as possible.

The technology pieces are relatively straightforward here,” Ray said. “I don’t see any big technology barriers we need to knock down.”

That said, T-Mobile is already involved in a pretty big technological undertaking as it looks to turn on its LTE network by the second half of next year. It’s part of a $4 billion network modernization effort that it kicked off this year after its failed bid to sell itself to AT&T.

MetroPCS is actually somewhat ahead on this front, having already launched LTE along with a number of low-cost LTE devices. The company is also ahead of some major carriers in testing delivering voice in addition to data over the newer network.

T-Mobile, meanwhile is the last of the four major carriers to move to LTE, following Verizon, AT&T and Sprint, which is just now expanding its LTE network.

Even before it has LTE, T-Mobile is working to offer up more iPhone-compatible HSPA+ service in hopes of attracting existing iPhone owners to bring their device onto its network. Currently T-Mobile USA doesn’t sell an iPhone and yet has 1 million or so customers, even though they are limited to very slow 2G data speeds.

“There’s a lot of work ahead,” Ray agreed, but said much of it has more to do with logistics and execution than major technology risk.

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