Sprint is said to be pursuing a merger with Charter Communications to create a media and telecom powerhouse.

This merger is the idea of Masayoshi Son, the founder and CEO of Tokyo-based telecom and Internet company Softbank, which acquired Sprint in 2013.

As proposed, the combined Sprint and Charter would become a new publicly-traded entity controlled by Softbank, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited persons familiar with the situation.

Charter and pay-TV and broadband competitor Comcast have been in discussions with Sprint about possible business deals, including the cable and broadband companies' reselling of Sprint's wireless service. The two-month exclusive discussion period for those talks ended this week, the Journal reported.

Should Softbank's Son be able to pull off the merger, the result would be a connected marketplace behemoth. Charter became the world’s second largest cable TV and Internet provider with its $79 billion acquisition last year of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. Its market cap is $98.1 billion, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. Sprint, valued at $32.8 billion, is the No. 4 wireless carrier in the U.S.

But Charter isn't up for the deal, reported Bloomberg, which cited a person familiar with the matter.

Neither Sprint nor Charter had comment on the report.

Why all the merger talk? To keep up with the competition.

The biggest wireless carriers, AT&T and Verizon, each provide traditional pay-TV service — AT&T with DirecTV and U-verse and Verizon with its Fios TV. Both also deliver wireless video programming, through AT&T's DirecTV Now and Verizon's go90 services.

AT&T and Verizon have also followed Comcast in its drive to own content to deliver over its telecom networks. After acquiring 51% of NBCUniversal in 2011 from GE, Comcast got the rest in 2013 and bought DreamWorks Animation last year for $3.8 billion.

AT&T's $85 billion bid for Time Warner is expected to close later this year. Verizon has added AOL and Yahoo to its content holdings — now combined in a Verizon-controlled company called Oath.

Comcast also has begun offering a wireless service of its own called Xfinity Mobile, which uses capacity from Verizon as well as Wi-Fi. And Charter also plans to launch a wireless offering next year, using Verizon's network.

The complicated talks might not result in the mega-deal, the Journal says, and a long-discussed merger between T-Mobile and Sprint could perhaps be revisited as a result of these talks.

Follow USA TODAY reporter Mike Snider on Twitter: @MikeSnider.