T-Mobile Appears To Be Quitting VMware Amid Support Rights Lawsuit With Broadcom
6 56T-Mobile appears to be migrating its 303,000-core VMware environment to another platform while fighting Broadcom in court for the extended support it says its perpetual-license agreement guarantees. "The matter is somewhat urgent," The Register reports, because a court-ordered support arrangement expires August 3, "so T-Mobile may soon be unable to get support for its very substantial VMware estate." The Register reports: The dispute relates to a deal T-Mobile struck with VMware in August 2023, which saw the telco acquire perpetual licenses and two years of support for some software, plus the option for a further year of support. When Broadcom acquired VMware in 2023, it stopped selling perpetual licenses and standalone support deals for customers with those licenses. Broadcom also reduced the virtualization giant's product range from over 150 products to two subscription-only bundles. Broadcom now mostly sells its Cloud Foundation (VCF) private cloud suite. Customers including AT&T and Tesco tried to exercise their right to extended support, but Broadcom declined to do so. AT&T settled on confidential terms. Tesco is pursuing the matter in the courts.
When customers exercise their option for extended support, Broadcom argues it can't deliver because the products covered by the contract don't exist anymore, its contracts allow it to deny support for dead products, and subscriptions are now the industry standard. T-Mobile started using VMware's products in 2008. In one hearing, the carrier's counsel described T-Mobile's VMware implementation as "the base of the entire internal network" and "the place where 1,000 applications reside." Another filing, from Broadcom, says the telco runs VMware software on over 303,000 CPU cores.
Court documents allege that in 2024 Broadcom notified T-Mobile it would not renew support after the initial two-year deal expired in 2025. The two parties kept talking about possible new arrangements. T-Mobile also sought an injunction that would compel Broadcom to provide extended support. Broadcom opposed the injunction, arguing that T-Mobile deliberately waited too long to seek it. At one point T-Mobile suggested a $20 million deal for another two years of support. An affirmation filed last week by T-Mobile vice president of technology Kevin Luu says the carrier sought that arrangement "to be able to complete T-Mobile's transition away from VMware at a more deliberate pace."
The court eventually granted the injunction forcing Broadcom to offer support beyond August 2025, but required T-Mobile to pay $5.28 million and post a $500,000 undertaking. Broadcom continued to provide support but also sought damages on grounds that the injunction meant it missed out on a new deal with T-Mobile. The telco has rubbished that argument in part because the two parties were still talking about a new deal. Broadcom later proposed to charge $24 million for extended support covering six products, a sum it said would cover over 20 staff needed to support T-Mobile. The carrier fired back by pointing out that it has made just two support calls in 2026, which hardly justifies such a massive staff and expense.
6 comments
Everyone Saw This Coming (Score: 5, Informative)
by machineghost ( 622031 ) on Wednesday July 01, 2026 @07:19PM (#66219164)
Broardcom's entire business model with these acquisitions (they did the same thing with others before VMWare) is to acquire something everyone depends on AND can't easily switch off ... and then jack up the prices by an insane amount.
It doesn't matter if most customers eventually leave: they will stick with what they have, no matter the cost, long enough for Broadcom to cover the entire cost of acquisition. At the end of the day they have more money than they started with, a small fraction of customers still paying, and some significant IP.
They win all around, and everyone else (including the acquired company and its now-fired employees) loses.
Re:Everyone Saw This Coming (Score: 5, Insightful)
by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Thursday July 02, 2026 @01:17AM (#66219378)
I guarantee there's someone, or a few someones, at t-mobile who saw this coming. They're mid level support or engineers. I'm sure they were screaming to all that they could find about what was coming, but upper management and the powers that be ignored them. None could confront the mass migration that was necessary if this group of someones were right, so they must be wrong.
Until they weren't.
And so this group will be rewarded with all the shit-work needed to get the migration done, while the very same people that ignored the timebomb ticking in their closet will be rewarded for their "vision" and "decisiveness".
God I don't miss corporate.
Get off of VMWARE ASAP, but be warned (Score: 5, Informative)
by williamyf ( 227051 ) on Wednesday July 01, 2026 @07:57PM (#66219192)
VMWare is more than virtualization.
OpenStack technical trainer here:
If you think of VMWare in 2026 as virtualization only solution, like we still are in 2006, then sure, KVM, or QUEMU, Xen, BSD's VMM, or Hyper-V are cromulent options.
But nowadays, VMWare, XenServer/Xencloud, on Premises Azure et al are used to make Private Clouds, or the fleets running on them use a few advanced functions beyond virtualization, with all that implies. Very few workloads are "virtualization only", not touching any of the advanced or the cloud-dy functions .
The linux equivalent would be OpenStack, with all the load that implies.
And yes, many of the FOSS solutions run KVM under the hood, with a few exceptions like Xen based ones, or BSD's vmm and vmmd, but again, what really counts in 2026 is not the Hypervisor, but all the other advanced stuff built atop of it.
There is another aspect in this too, and it is Application support. Many ISVs certify their platforms/apps on specific OSs/Distros running on Specific Hypervisors.
So, for instance, your ISV may say: Only Windows Server 2022 or 2025 only, RHEL 10, or Suse 16, on top of VMWare, Openstack or Azure.
And there you are, for those workloads, you can forget about all the other solutions (obscure or not) that homelabbers love to peddle. Big corpos can pressure smaller ISVs to support their preferred solution, but the big ISVs will most likely put a few options on offer, and that's it.
In those cases, large intitutions (like T-Mobile, the focus of the article) have 100s or even 1000s of ISVs some more crititcal than others, and they need to reach commonality of solutions, or personel requirements ballon (the legacy VMWare group, the Openstack group, the XenCloud group, the ProxMox group, the Azure group, the Nutanix group, the....) along with all the other support functions (negotiations and keeping track of support contracts for each technology). A veritable nightmare. So, unlike homelabbers, Big corpos will probably go to a one or two vendor solution for their internal clouds.
Since VMWare was the leader, and for many lustres a model citizen, pretty muche every single ISV offered them as a supported option, therfore, it was the easier default.
So, get out of VMWare ASAP, but be warned it will be hard, as you need to provide alternatives to the advanced functions, and align certification requirements for support.
Also, use this as a clean-up opportunity . Retire redundant APPs, retire inhouse stuff with big technical debt, move it to either functions inside SW you already own (even if they are not completely taylor made) or to SaaS. That way your VM stable will be smaller, migration will be faster and easier, and the bill from whatever replaces VMWare will be "even moar" cheaper.
Broadcom told us all it was going to scam us... (Score: 5, Informative)
by MikeDataLink ( 536925 ) on Wednesday July 01, 2026 @07:57PM (#66219194)
They didn't even try to hide it. They were very public about this acquisition being about milking their customer base who would not be able to migrate away in time to avoid paying them.
My company ditched VMware within 3 months of the announcement. We moved with all deliberate speed to Proxmox and to be honest, we're happier there. Wish they had forced us sooner.
Oh the irony! Hurt Corpos hurt Corpos (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Jumperalex ( 185007 ) on Wednesday July 01, 2026 @09:11PM (#66219262)
Broadcom: We are altering the deal. Pray we do not alter it further
T-Mobile: Fuck you we're leaving
Also T-Mobile: We're cancelling all legacy phone contracts despite promising we wouldn't.
'Pharma Bro' Martin Shkreli modus operandi (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Gavino ( 560149 ) on Wednesday July 01, 2026 @09:30PM (#66219270)
Broadcom are the tech equivalent of 'Pharma Bro' Martin Shkreli, who became infamous and earned the nickname after he hiked the price of a potentially lifesaving antiparasitic medication in 2015.
Pharma bro logic: The people who pay the massive price hikes will be more than enough to offset the people who die because they cannot afford the medication, and this short-term revenue boost will cover the purchase price, and from that point on it's all free money.
Broadcom bro logic: The companies who pay the massive price hikes will be more than enough to offset the companies who leave because they cannot afford the subscription, and this short-term revenue boost will cover the purchase price, and from that point on it's all free money.
It's the exact same playbook.