News summary produced by Claude AI
T-Mobile has filed a lawsuit in New York state court against Broadcom, seeking a declaration that the company must honor the wireless carrier’s perpetual software licenses and continue providing support services for VMware products. The mobile company claims it operates approximately 1,000 applications across tens of thousands of virtual machines using roughly 303,140 CPU cores running on VMware infrastructure.
T-Mobile purchased perpetual VMware licenses in 2023 that included two years of support with an option to extend for a third year. According to the company’s filing, when it attempted to renew the support agreement for the third year at a cost of $5,288,398.45, Broadcom declined, indicating it had discontinued sales of perpetual licenses in favor of subscription-based offerings. Broadcom consolidated VMware products into bundled packages at higher price points following its acquisition of the company.
A judge granted T-Mobile a temporary injunction allowing it to receive support services from October 2025 through August 3, 2026, for $5.28 million, along with a $500,000 undertaking requirement. At one stage of the dispute, T-Mobile offered Broadcom $20 million for two years of updates and support services, citing litigation expenses and risks to network security. Broadcom countered by claiming it has spent $24 million providing support for six VMware products and assigning three dedicated account managers, though T-Mobile stated it does not use three of those products and has filed only two service cases during the current year.
Broadcom has argued that T-Mobile’s situation is atypical, pointing out that thousands of customers have successfully transitioned to subscription models. Similar disputes have previously occurred between Broadcom and other major customers, with one case involving AT&T being settled privately. An ongoing similar case involves Tesco. Neither company has made public statements regarding the litigation.