Dish Network proposes merger with Sprint Nextel for $25.5 billion

[kg4icg]

From my point of view, the deal with Sprint and Softbank is going to be completed. Mr Ergan and company just wants to add a little disruption to the process like what they tried to do with the Clearwire deal. Probably by the urging of some minority shareholders who don't want the deals going thru.

[Guest 503ducati]

fwiw, article on pending spectrum auction: http://www.dailywire...ice-at-600-mhz/

 

The US Department of Justice has called on the FCC to more aggressively regulate the amount of 600 MHz spectrum that AT&T and Verizon can own.

[Guest 503ducati]

SoftBank Stands to Make $4 Billion if Sprint Deal Unravels

 

 

http://online.wsj.co...1752909446.html

 

 

By DAISUKE WAKABAYASHI

 

TOKYO—SoftBank Corp. 9984.TO -6.83% said it expects to complete its acquisition of Sprint Nextel Corp. S +0.99% without fighting off Dish Network Corp.'s DISH +1.01% $25.5 billion cash-and-stock bid with a sweeter offer.

 

But the Japanese company is looking at a profit of about $4 billion if the original deal doesn't go through.

 

. . .

 

—Atsuko Fukase and Kana Inagaki contributed to this article.

Write to Daisuke Wakabayashi at Daisuke.Wakabayashi@wsj.com

[supert0nes]

I love that clause... More firmly cements the Sprint + Softbank merger.

[supert0nes]

http://www.fiercewir...tito/2013-04-16

 

Entner: How Sprint-Dish would affect Sprint shareholders, customers, competitors and the regulators

 

 

 

Dish Network just threw its hat into another merger ring with its $25.5 billion bid to acquire Sprint. This follows Dish's bid to purchase Clearwire, which Sprint was already in the process of purchasing. Dish's announcement followed Friday's news that Verizon Wireless is offering to purchase some spectrum from Clearwire, all while Crest Financial is adamantly opposing Sprint's proposed purchase of Clearwire. It looks like Sprint can't catch a break here. Let's look at how the different constituents--Sprint shareholders, Sprint as the company, Sprint's customers, Sprint's competitors, and the regulator--are affected:

 

Sprint shareholders are going to get more money. The SoftBank offer values Sprint at slightly over $20 billion, while Dish's offer values Sprint at over $25 billion. It is quite possible that SoftBank will sweeten its offer to top that of Dish Network.

 

Sprint as a company is going to experience a longer phase of uncertainty. The company's direction, while not in limbo, will remain on the same course as it is now so as to preserve the opportunity to change direction for the new owners. Unfortunately for Sprint the current course includes postpaid customer losses and a course adjustment is very much needed. This is especially the case since T-Mobile has just announced a brand new positioning and Sprint as the other nationwide value leader brand needs to respond to it. The increased ability to bundle products with Dish could help make Sprint an integrated media company, an idea former Sprint CEO Gary Forsee always championed--unfortunately before its time. Maybe the time is right for Charlie Ergen? What speaks for SoftBank is its expertise in running wireless networks and its deep pockets. Bringing Sprint's network up to par after years of underinvestment will require significant financial resources which SoftBank has in abundance.

Sprint customers might be the big winners when it comes to the ways Dish could bundle its offers with that of Sprint. How much can be bundled with linear television is yet to be seen after the MediaFlo flop. On-demand video on the other side is the major source of data consumption on wireless networks, but mostly short-form content rather than the movies that Dish has available through Blockbuster. With the huge infusion of additional spectral capacity, the post-merger company could support very high quality, very fast mobile video and other mobile data applications. Dish's traditional cost-cutting measures and low prices would make Sprint a solid value player. Dish is also known for its good customer service so customers would continue to benefit there. At the same time, they would forgo new impulses from Japan where customer service and network performance is legendary.

Sprint's competitors, especially T-Mobile, will see this as a welcome development. As T-Mobile is going through a merger itself and is repositioning it as the "uncarrier" it benefits the most when its direct competitor for the value segment among the nationwide carriers has to battle warring suitors. Verizon and AT&T are probably standing by watching the spectacle in amazement. If Dish were to acquire Sprint, the combined company would hold more than double the amount of spectrum held by AT&T and Verizon, catapulting Sprint ahead of its competitors in terms of capacity to support intensive data use by subscribers.

Regulators must be feeling a tad embarrassed to be overtaken by events so quickly, yet again. Just last week the Department of Justice argued to the FCC that the agency limit AT&T and Verizon access to more spectrum in the upcoming incentive auctions and instead get the spectrum into the hands of the "smaller" national providers on the theory that the "smaller" providers needed the infusion of spectrum to compete. Not even a week later, the proposed Dish/Sprint/Clearwire merger would create an operator that has 2.5-times as much spectrum as Verizon or AT&T. No fictional play could have made the Department of Justice's position more untenable, more quickly. As the regulators desperately try to engineer the birth of another nationwide carrier, they forget how poorly such machinations have worked in the recent past. Terms like NextWave and LightSquared, seem to have evaporated from recent memory inside the Beltway. It will be interesting to see how this proposed transaction will be evaluated by the regulators, assuming the Sprint shareholders allow it to proceed. If nothing else, it's another reminder that the wireless sector has a way of working issues out a lot faster than Washington.

Roger Entner is the Founder and Analyst at Recon Analytics. He received an Honorary Doctor of Science from Heriot-Watt University. Recon Analytics specializes in fact-based research and the analysis of disparate data sources to provide unprecedented insights into the world of telecommunications. Follow Roger on Twitter @rogerentner.

 

 

Yes, I left his picture in there on purpose.

[WiWavelength]

http://www.fiercewir...tito/2013-04-16

 

Yes, I left his picture in there on purpose.

 

Wow, I had no idea that The Fantastic Four character The Thing's real name is Roger Entner.

 

 

AJ

[JohnHovah]

http://www.fiercewir...tito/2013-04-16

 

 

 

Yes, I left his picture in there on purpose.

 

What most fail to take into account here, is that Sprint is and has been steadily improving and has implemented a full-on (and fully funded) overhaul of its network regardless of external offers such as that of Dish. The plan has always been to pull Clearwire fully under the Sprint wing (merger) not to mention Sprint was an integral part of its creation and remains one of the few financial backers who has continued to keep the company afloat.

 

I am so sick of Ergen's BS synergy arguments because there are presently none, period. Nobody wants your forced bundles or the inevitable and subsequent loss of focus on what makes a wireless carrier a great wireless carrier to sooth the ego of a megalomaniac who has no real intention of pressing forward with all of Sprint's plan that have brought it back in line to be a successful, and soon to be profitable once more, commercial wireless entity. It seems more likely that since Charlie is not and has not gotten his way to date he will try everything in his power to derail a successful merger/deployment/whatever because he feels that if he cannot have it nobody can.

 

He talks a good talk and throws some lucrative carrots out there to coax short term investors or those who want a quick buck or a quick return on investment with which to jump on his bandwagon. The fact remains that between all of the contracted, deliberately vague or implied limitations, provisos, terms, conditions, restrictions, ad nauseum, do not bode well for a successful venture or a future that is not rife with a massive dismantlement of Sprint proper and a short selling off of chunks to the highest bidder for his own quick buck. I also cannot see how anyone with half a brain and a longterm outlook on future success and earnings (which are coming) could see Charlie as nothing more than the devil he is. The fact that Party J is also trying to gum up the works only reinforces the dollar signs in the eyes of any greedy investors whether or not they are with VZ, CLWR or DISH.

 

Sorry Charlie, not on my watch.

[Rawvega]

http://www.fiercewir...tito/2013-04-16

 

 

 

Yes, I left his picture in there on purpose.

 

While I don't think Entner is quite as bad as Muppett (surprised I haven't seen any drivel from him lately), it's hard to take him seriously when he errs so early in his (jaded) opinion piece:

 

Sprint shareholders are going to get more money. The SoftBank offer values Sprint at slightly over $20 billion, while Dish's offer values Sprint at over $25 billion.

 

Ummm, no. SoftBank's offer doesn't value Sprint at $20B. Their offer values 70% of Sprint at slightly over $20B. Big difference there, Roger...Just so unnecessarily sloppy.

[Fraydog]

Or, for that matter, that he didn't account for Verizon as "Party J". The only party that might be sitting back is AT&T, but if EBS isn't going to count against their spectrum cap, then they'd participate in an EBS fire sale as well. The only reason I am not counting them as an instigator is that they have too many spectrum transactions to care much about Clear (Verizon 700 B, Grain Management, Corr, Alltel pt. 3 to name a few.)

 

VZW is not sitting back in this. He is wrong about that.

[S4GRU]

OMG. Entner came down wrong on every single point. *sigh*

 

Also, he fails to mention that most of the combined company's spectrum is high frequency. This new spectrum coming open that AT&T and VZW would be limited to is low frequency spectrum. Something the duopoly is flush with. He is in bed with AT&T and has proven it with his slanted writing for years.

 

The purpose of his hit piece here is to make a DISH deal seem like a good thing and paint the picture that the new company would have too much spectrum and that his beloved AT&T will need all the new low frequency spectrum that comes up so it can compete with those big bad asses over at Sprint/Dish. I get sick of his writing. It's worse in some ways, because Entner is much better regarded than Moffet in the industry.

 

AT&T would love for Sprint to go to DISH over Softbank. Softbank will be a virulent competitor to the duopoly that will go for the jugular. Softbank will also do anything and everything to shore up it's network and keep it operating well in order to compete. DISH will not try to compete with AT&T or VZW, but rather use Sprint to compete with DirecTV. Sprint is an end to its means of having a ready to go network for the lowest price possible.

 

But likely this whole DISH ploy is still just to either get ridiculously cheap network hosting or to get Sprint to hand over the Clearwire network and appropriate spectrum to Dish for their own evil spectrum wasting schemes.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 with Tapatalk HD

[WiWavelength]

...they have too many spectrum transactions to care much about Clear (Verizon 700 B, Grain Management, Corr, Alltel pt. 3 to name a few.)

 

I cannot get over Grain Management as the most oddly named licensee in the industry. Living in Kansas, we know a thing or two about "grain management." It looks like this:

 

 

AJ

[MacinJosh]

The whole Mobile TV thing that DISH wants to do is a waste of spectrum. I love TV as much as the next person, but I don't need it on my phone. That's what Netflix is for. Someone should hit Ergen in the head with a frying pan.

 

 

Sent from Josh's iPhone 5 using Tapatalk 2

[kg4icg]

The whole Mobile TV thing that DISH wants to do is a waste of spectrum. I love TV as much as the next person, but I don't need it on my phone. That's what Netflix is for. Someone should hit Ergen in the head with a frying pan.

 

 

Sent from Josh's iPhone 5 using Tapatalk 2

I have a tractor trailer.

[MacinJosh]

I have a tractor trailer.

That would work! Lol

 

 

Sent from Josh's iPhone 5 using Tapatalk 2

[WiWavelength]

I have a tractor trailer.

 

Are you offering to run over Charlie?

 

AJ

[JeffDTD]

 

Are you offering to run over Charlie?

 

AJ

 

Its not like he would die

[WiWavelength]

Its not like he would die

 

That would require a silver bullet or an oak stake?

 

AJ

[kg4icg]

Depends on how fast I go, and if I back over him. I can get a lowboy with a Cat D9L dozer on it. That way I can bury the evidence.

[jefbal99]

That would require a silver bullet or an oak stake?

 

AJ

 

You'd need to get all the horcruxes first.

[JohnHovah]

Its not like he would die

 

 

ROFLMFAO... I imagine running him over would just be an inconvenience as well, and this is what came to mind for me.

[Fraydog]

He'd be more like this...

 

[JeffDTD]

 

ROFLMFAO... I imagine running him over would just be an inconvenience as well, and this is what came to mind for me.

 

I LOVE THAT MOVIE.. thank you for making me smile...

 

It would def take a visit from The Winchesters to put Cap'n Howdy the hell circus clown down.

[Fraydog]

W, X, Y, and Z.

 

Guess which is which.

 

http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/sprint-helds-talks-4-companies-clinching-softbank-deal/2013-02-05

[JohnHovah]

W, X, Y, and Z.

 

Guess which is which.

 

http://www.fiercewir...deal/2013-02-05

 

I'm still minding the P's and Q's, but we can probably figure out all of these pretty easily.

[Rawvega]

W, X, Y, and Z.

 

Guess which is which.

 

http://www.fiercewir...deal/2013-02-05

 

Well Phil Goldstein did the detective work to deduce company W & company Z. Haven't put much thought into it yet as I'm beat at the moment, but I wonder if company X and company Y might be CenturyLink and/or Cox.