Sprint is allegedly in early talks to submit a counter offer against Deutsche Telekom to purchase MetroPCS, according to a report from Bloomberg. Citing "sources familiar with the matter," Bloomberg says that Sprint is currently crunching numbers to determine if a merger with MetroPCS would be feasible. This isn't the first time we've heard of Sprint's interest in MetroPCS: the carrier was allegedly very close to acquiring MetroPCS in February of this year, only to back down just before anything was finalized.

Deutsche Telekom's announcement of its plan to merge T-Mobile and MetroPCS came as a slight surprise earlier this week. The companies have already signed an agreement worth $1.5 billion to merge MetroPCS into T-Mobile, which makes Sprint's alleged plans fairly suspect. Bloomberg cites other sources that claim Deutsche Telekom is prepared to handle a counter bid from Sprint, however, so this may be something that the companies expected would happen. Should MetroPCS bow out of its deal with T-Mobile, it would be forced to pay a $150 million break up fee, while T-Mobile would have to cough up $250 million if it were to back out. As it stands now, if the merger is approved by regulators, T-Mobile will use MetroPCS' spectrum to build out its LTE network, though that won't happen until 2015.