Sprint chairman Masayoshi Son (pictured) appeared to be paving the way for John Legere, the outspoken CEO of T-Mobile US, to head up any merger between the two companies when he reportedly expressed admiration for his rival at Re/code’s Code Conference.

His comments come on the heels of a report by Kyodo, a Japanese news agency, saying Deutsche Telekom (which owns 67 per cent of T-Mobile US) had agreed a deal with SoftBank, Sprint’s majority shareholder, to sell T-Mobile US. Masayoshi Son is also SoftBank’s CEO.

Details of the reported agreement are nonetheless sketchy. According to a subsequent Reuters report, citing “sources familiar with the situation”, Deutsche Telekom is apparently willing to keep a minority stake in its US subsidiary (which would lower the price for Sprint, said the sources, and give the German firm a chance to benefit from any merger synergies).

Other details, such as pricing and financing, are still not clear.

Son has long coveted T-Mobile US, arguing that a tie-up between the third- and fourth-largest mobile operators in the US would give the necessary scale to mount a more serious challenge to front-runners Verizon Wireless and AT&T.

At the same conference in which he sang the praises of Legere, Son further argued that recent mega-deals between telecoms and media companies – AT&T’s $49 billion move on DirecTV, and Comcast’s $45 billion deal for Time Warner – made a tie-up between Sprint and T-Mobile US all the more compelling.

The two enlarged firms, said Son, meant competition for internet access was restricted as there was only one other company – Verizon – that could match them in terms of scale.

“Right now, there are three big players out there, and they are getting even bigger,” said Son, who is also chairman of SoftBank. “If anyone says four is better than three, I agree with that. We should be number four.”

Son’s enthusiasm for a tie-up with T-Mobile US appears to be matched by Timotheus Hoettges, Deutsche Telekom’s CEO.

In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, he said that “AT&T and Verizon generate much more cash-flow and have much more traffic on their networks than a smaller player like T-Mobile US. As a consequence they have deep pockets when it comes to spectrum auctions, in which T-Mobile US can’t keep up.”

US consolidation, he concluded, would therefore be “the best option”. “We can’t be the alibi to run an oligopolistic market in the US,” said Hoettges.

Getting a deal done, however, is hardly straightforward and will require regulatory approval.