T-Mobile CEO John Legere and Sprint Executive Chairman Marcelo Claure met with FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel last week, along with other executives. The meeting was set to discuss the approval of the $26 billion merger between T-Mobile and Sprint, according to an FCC filing.

The company representatives obviously are trying to convince the FCC to give the merger its stamp of approval. But, as part of their presentation, they described deficiencies of their two standalone companies. T-Mobile’s shortfalls include:

Thin 5G layer nationwide

No widespread high-speed broadband

Cannot keep pace with growing demand with low pricing

Insufficient mid-band capacity

Limited solutions at increasing costs to address rising congestion on T-Mobile’s network

And according to the companies, Sprint’s deficiencies include:

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Limited, localized 5G

Uncovered pops = 41%

High speeds unavailable where coverage is week, especially in-building

Large amount of 2.5GHz locked on LTE

Reliant on expensive-to-deploy 2.5GHz spectrum for coverage

If their merger doesn’t get approved, they’ve certainly given a lot of ammunition to their competitors’ marketing departments in the future.

RELATED: Sprint blames network for much of its ‘difficult situation’ that’s only getting worse

Sprint, by the way, didn’t denigrate its network in February when it announced the initial rollout of 5G. "Wireless customers are soon going to have their first mobile 5G experience with Sprint, and it won’t be limited to their home or a millimeter wave hotspot," said Sprint CTO John Saw in a prepared statement. And Sprint CEO Michel Combes said at the time that its 5G network was “not just for five customers, it’s for millions of customers.”

RELATED: Sprint to launch commercial 5G in 4 U.S. cities in May

In their presentation to the FCC last week, the two companies argued that their merger would eliminate the shortcomings of their individual networks because each would fill in the gaps of the other.

They reiterated their contention that combining Sprint’s 2.5GHz deployments with T-Mobile’s build-out of 600 MHz spectrum would deliver improved services to underserved rural areas. And they said augmenting T-Mobile’s 600 MHz low band spectrum with mmWave would bring additional speed to dense urban areas.

Other topics with FCC

In the FCC meeting last week, the participants also discussed the New T-Mobile’s plan to deploy in-home broadband, as well as its commitment to aggressively lower prices. In addition, they discussed the competition among providers of prepaid plans with the T-Mobile and Sprint executives saying their merger would benefit customers of those plans. And finally, they renewed their promise that their merger would create jobs, not reduce jobs.

