"Sprint is ...in the midst of negotiations for a possible merger with T‑Mobile US"
Being a T-Mobile customer, I certainly hope they are not foolish enough to follow through on a deal with Sprint. The genesis of Sprint's current woes can be found in their acquisition of Nextel and many of the same issues would also apply here, most notably, the need to merge two disparate network technologies! The costs to move users from Nextel's network over to Sprint's far outweighed the gains of a larger customer base and left Sprint swimming in red ink.
As to Ruben's new toy, it's pretty close to DOA out the door. It's one "innovation" (which has been tried before in various incarnations with little success) is tied to a price way to high to be enticing to the general public. So, in the end, they're tying a dead phone to a dead carrier. No loss.