AFP,  SAN FRANCISCO: US wireless operators Sprint and T-Mobile announced Saturday they had called off merger talks after failing to clinch mutually agreeable terms, ending a potential tie-up that would have dramatically impacted the sector in the United States.

T-Mobile, an affiliate of Germany’s Deutsche Telekom, and Sprint, a subsidiary of Japan’s SoftBank, are the third and fourth largest US wireless operators, respectively.

Together, the pair would have had 131 million subscribers, virtually matching second-ranked AT&T and posing stiff competition to market leader Verizon Communications.