According to the story, which has yet to be confirmed officially by Sprint and MetroPCS, talks between the two companies have been underway for months and Sprint's CEO Dan Hesse reportedly gave his approval to the deal. It was supposed to be officially announced sometime next week. The merger would have given MetroPCS shareholders shares in Sprint also with some cash for a deal that would have been worth about $8 billion. However, for reasons that have yet to be reported, Sprint's board of directors apparently voted not to go ahead with the MetroPCS merger. Sprint is still struggling to fight off both Verizon and AT&T, both of which are now busy building their 4G LTE networks. Sprint is well behind on its own 4G plans although it has stated it will being launching its own LTE network later in 2012.