ChadBroChillz

I wonder what this means for the future of nTelos and Sprint. I doubt Sprint will buy or renew nTelos's deal if Dish has any deal in place for building out Dish's spectrum. 

Dish should have waited. Crest and the rest of the greedy team now sees even more dollar signs. RIP Dish's offer. Clearwire's stock is now trading above Dish's offer. 

Let's say Clearwire votes for Dish's proposal, does that mean Sprint loses the 2500 mhz spectrum? With still majority stake in the company, how would this impact Sprint and their NV rollout? Is 2500mhz even worth it for Sprint if they can get 600mhz?

No, it just means they have to go through Dish to get the spectrum or have to wait until the independent directors decide that amending the equity agreement to allow sprint to lower the buyout % is smarter than going into bankruptcy.

Sprint will still have roughly a 68% in the company. It will have no affect to Sprints currently known plans. Potential plans that sprint and softbank know about is a different story.

600mhz and 2.5ghz have different uses. 600mhz is for coverage. 2.5ghz is for capacity and speeds. And yes it is still very much worth it. 2.5ghz will allow sprint to deploy blazing fast speeds that their competitors cannot catch up to. Sprint could deploy enough spectrum to get 1Gbps speeds in most major markets.

I have a feeling that Dish will wait until the very last minute on June 18th to thwart and make a tender offer for Sprint. This Sprint/Softbank deal needs to close now so that Sprint and Softbank can focus on how to get Clearwire as well. Dish just needs to go away.

They can't make a tender offer for more than 17% of the company. Softbank/Sprint amended that into the new merger agreement under the sprint shareholder rights.

Softbank was not dumb enough to leave that opening. They made sure dish would have to fight on level ground. Sprint has to make a fully financed offer with commitment fees paid to be considered by June 18th.

Lets see

5 billion cash infusion or -9 billion cash infusion.

Dish has no room to talk. Also I believe the FCC and DOJ are secretly rooting for Softbank. They have made it clear that the wireless market needs a strong 3 possibly 4 to compete against the duopoly.

I am surprised that the FCC has taken so long.

Dish's financing actually allows other shareholders to participate based on their shares so long as Dish gets 25%

Sprint has a few options. It is worth mentioning that Sprint knew about this decision for a week. Sprint could have matched the offer. Sprint can still raise their offer now and keep the current agreements in place, but I believe Spront want to end this as quick as possible, which may mean letting the deal fail.

After it fails, they have the necessary vote to change the Bylaws to remove the 75% requirement. I think Sprint will keep an eye on now many shareholders actually tender.

If it is over 25%, they will raise their offer prior to the rejection, but if it is below 25%, I think they make the new offer after it is rejected.

They have only accepted financing for a very limited number of months. I believe only 3 times. According to my research Sprint needs all strategic partners to go against the Clearwire recommendation and that may not happen. Sprint can easily lose Intel or one of those cable companies support and not have enough stake in the company. Business is about making money and that is all Intel and the Cable Companies want.

The deal was 80 million in financing each month, which would be converted to Clearwire shares at a price of 1.50 per share. 3 months would be 240 million dollars, which is around 160 million shares that go in Sprint's favor. By comparison, Crest owned 57,653,419 in dec 2012, which resulted in 8.34% of Clearwire's A shares. 

There is only about 13% more of Clearwire they can control. Minority shareholders will not be selling for under the Dish offer unless you count Intel and the cable companies which only hold 13%. Sprint only has access to Intel's and the cable companies' stacks which only give them 13% more making it near impossible for them to reach that 66 and 2/3 % they need.

Sprint and supporters currently have 64% of the vote. Clearwire has already taken multiple months of financing from Sprint. Sprint and supporters will have 68% of the vote, if Sprint's offer fails, which would trigger the conversion of the debt to bonds.  They would have already reached the 66 2/3% vote. 

Nothing. Sprint can veto any agreement and simply wait clearwire out until it gets 68% ownership later this year. At that time they can change the bylaws and take over clearwire

 

Amendment

The Operating Agreement may be amended by the written consent of the managing member, members (other than the managing member) collectively holding a percentage interest of at least 662/3% in Clearwire Communications, the independent designees nominated to Clearwire’s board of directors, and each of Sprint, Intel, and the Strategic Investors as a group, for so long as Sprint, Intel or the Strategic Investors as a group, respectively, has a percentage interest of at least 5% in Clearwire.

http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/CLWR/2527966448x0xS1193125%2D11%2D345157/1442505/filing.pdf

 Sprint would get above the 66 2/3% if the deal fails, they would not have to wait until the standstill agreement ends to grab more shares.  Sprint could be planning on letting their current offer fail, then raising the offer after it fails, which would mean the bonds are covered to shares and move Sprint and Co from 64% to 68%. If their offer is above Dish's offer, then Clearwire board would likely drop Dish's support and approve Sprint's deal. With board approval, Sprint would be able to meet all those requirements, which means they could reduce the necessary votes prior to the deal vote. 

Greatest thing Sprint did, and Clearwire was financially forced to accept, was the monthly financing converted to ownership.  Sprint is getting 65% by this fall and an veto everything else until then.

 

No articles have been able to prove anything different yet.

They only convert if the deal is rejected. However, if the deal was voted down now, Sprint would have around 68% of Clearwire, according to Masayoshi Son. Sprint should be able to get the bylaws changed then, but I do believe the board would have to be on board with Sprint for that to happen. 

Wsj is reporting that Clearwire will recommend Dish's offer

http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/a/SB10001424127887324188604578541524227687626?mg=reno64-wsj

We will see how Sprint Softbank react, but I doubt they will let Dish's offer get signed before upping offer.

Id call the 3B absolutely reasonable, not a poison pill. The cost to undo the softbank deal together with the financial cost Sprint would incur if Dish ultimately walked away from them together with the lost opportunity caused by chasing softbank away is easily worth 3 billion

 

Tmo got 4B from ATT and they are smaller than sprint. This is typical Ergen. Once he had softbank out of the picture, his scrooge ways would have set in. I officially retract my opinion about charlie wanting a wireless network. I believe the analysts who declared this a big bluff for Ergen to score a hosting deal were spot on

 

Sent from my Note II. Its so big.

Tmobile got 6 billion actually. 3 billion in cash, 2 billion in spectrum, and an HSPA+ roaming agreement with 1 Billion.   3 Billion is more than reasonable, especially since Sprint would have had to pay 1 billion just to get out of the Softbank deal. 

Well, Looks like Paulson is happy with the deal according to Ny Times. 

Hope you get better soon. 

Is it worth it if the other 4.1 billion goes to the clearwire acquisition? It could raise Sprint's bid...

 

 

Sent from my iPhone 5 using Tapatalk 2

No, but the Clearwire bidding war is not over yet, and this gives sprint less capital to raise its offer for Clearwire.  I believe Sprint's best hope is if the Clearwire board formally come out against the Dish offer, like Sprint has with the Dish offer now. 

I think I read that Softbank will be lowering their capital investment from 8 billion to 5 billion. Sprint will be only getting 1.9 billion at closing, instead of the original 4.9 billion.  

With the debt the company has, I would think higher prices would be coming, and I doubt we would ever see expansion beyond Sprint's current coverage with 800Mhz added in 2014-2015. 

SoftBank has to protect their own interests. They would be foolish to not consider T-Mobile if Sprint blows up. It's much less of a technical transition for one. WCDMA/LTE carrier buys out WCDMA/LTE carrier. Dog bites man.

 

Also, Sprint's own history of mismanagement at the board level has to come into play. The merger call is not made by Hesse. It's made by Jim Hance. If I'm right, wasn't he on the Sprint board when Nextel came into play? Hance blocked the MetroPCS deal, and that nothing to do with AWS spectrum, it was his incompetence.

 

They can always buy spectrum in band 41 from a desperate, over-leveraged Dish. If SoftBank buys T-Mobile, believe me, they'll be able to, over the long term, do everything they wanted to do with Sprint.

 

Also, you all better believe that Hesse's history with Son at Terabeam will come up. The end of Terabeam wasn't that inspiring. While I may not like Dish, if Dish ups SoftBank's bid to a point where a complete buyout provides a premium on Sprint's bid, which would be $28.71 billion, then Hance is going to sell out.

As soon as ergen won, I am willing to bet his interest would magically disappear and his true intentions would shine. Ergen would buy up surplus spectrum from Clearwire, then sign a network share deal with Sprint. That has always been Ergen's endgame. He is not going to over leverage his company to get Sprint. He is trying to agitate. 

Another interesting updated.  Seems odd for the courts to get involved in such an important part of a company's future... I am a little biased towards the Softbank merger though

 

http://www.kansascity.com/2013/06/07/4278697/hearing-on-sprint-merger-lawsuit.html

While, I do not want the courts involved, I would be okay if they made an injunction to delay the vote. I still believe that Clearwire must be reeled in prior to the sprint-softbank vote. If Softbank gets Sprint, it would allow cheapie charlie to focus on obstructing the Sprint-Clearwire deal.  The Sprint-Clearwire deal is still a relatively cheap deal. Sprint's current offer is valued at 2.5 Billion and Dish's offer is around 1.63 billion for 25% of the company(6.5Bil for the whole company). Dish could deplete Sprint's new capital in this bidding war. 

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-softbank-eyes-t-mobile-193643098.html

 

 Music to to that rat bastard Charlie's ears I'm sure. I wonder what, if anything, Sprint would get if SoftBank walked away from the deal. 

 

Between the clowns at Crest, Mount Kellett, et al on one side and Charlie on the other, I certainly figure that it's conceivable that at some point that Son could throw his hands up and say, "To hell with this." The only thing with T-Mobile USA is that it wouldn't give Son his economies of scale in regards to 2.5GHz TD-LTE.

I think economic scale is a huge part of this Sprint deal though, plus T-mobile could not compete as well as Sprint could compete with the big two.  I am not sure I buy that he is already going to give up on the deal. Dish does not even have a legit offer on the table.  I guess we will see what happens in the coming weeks.  

I think Charlie is trying to intimidate SoftBank in giving up. This is all a rouse and a charade to scare Masayoshi Son off the playground. He's trying to give the message that Sprint and Clearwire aren't worth fighting for. Mr. Son is much smarter than Charlie, I think it will backfire. Charlie is just an obnoxious bully, and he's doubling down.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

Jack Grubman on CNBC put it best,  " Charlie Ergen might be a great poker player, but he has a crappy hand and all his cards are facing up". I really do not believe Masayoshi Son will back down. Economic scale never goes away, plus 2.6Ghz spectrum may be the key to international LTE roaming and Sprint would have the monopoly on it. Those two factors could fund the deal on their own.  If Sprint and Softbank were to actually take market shares from ATT or Verizon, they could become the largest purchaser of smartphones. 

That's why we has filters .

Did this man sell you those filters?

There is no evidence that the 1x Advanced carriers has been configured for 4x capacity at the NV tower side.  So even though at some point it can be configured for 4x capacity it will still be years from now before we see that happening.

 

Also the "4x capacity" is a culmination of the tower side and handset side 1x Advanced upgrades which so far only the smartphones beginning in 2012 contain the qualcomm chip that supports 1x Advanced.  There are still plenty of folks out there including myself that have yet to upgrade which are still on 1x CDMA 2000.  Sprint cannot afford to collapse all CDMA voice into a single CDMA carrier on 800 and 1900 just yet.  Also we have to keep in mind that multiple 3G EVDO carriers are eating up precious spectrum which cannot be taken down until LTE is well into completion.  I see Sprint only taking down all EVDO carriers only to free up spectrum when it plans to take down the entire 3G network all together 1x and EVDO which would signal VoLTE is prime time ready which will be many years from now.  We still have AT&T and Tmobile running 2G networks for gosh sakes.

 

The problem with Clearwire TD-LTE is that currently it is going to be deployed on a hotspot basis.  Clearwire still hasn't mentioned any plan of upgrading all 16,000+ sites to TD-LTE and also to major markets that were never deployed with Wimax.  We just don't know the full plan that Softbank/Sprint have for TD-LTE yet and I find it hard financially and feasibly to deploy TD-LTE nationwide.  Therefore I am not convinced and going to overestimate the impact of TD-LTE in terms of its offloading capacity in most areas I will be in. 

 

All I am saying is that if that if Sprint can get at least another 10-20 MHz of PCS spectrum they should.  There is nothing wrong with Tmobile focusing only on AWS spectrum.  The AWS spectrum band is growing rapidly with the AWS-3 (2155-2180 Mhz paired with 1755-1780 MHz) spectrum being auctioned sometime next year which is 50 MHz of fresh AWS spectrum. Tmobile and possibly Verizon are going to be the major players bidding on that spectrum.  Tmobile will be fine and they can always refarm their PCS spectrum into LTE.

I highly doubt Sprint has paid the billions necessary to deploy new 1xAdvanced channels cards for the 4x configuration to be years away. I would think that this would be the perfect time for them to make all the necessary upgrades, plus I believe their are capacity benefits that current 1x phones could take advantage of. 

I disagree that Sprint has enough mid band spectrum at 1900 MHz.  There are still plenty of markets that have < 20 MHz of PCS spectrum (not counting G block) that can use more capacity relief. Since the PCS band is Sprint's main band for voice and data, Sprint should still strive to get at least another 20 MHz of PCS in all markets. Bidding aggressively for nationwide PCS H block spectrum licenses will be a good start.  I am not going to bank on 600 MHz spectrum as the savior since we don't know how willing the TV broadcasters are going to give up their spectrum.  It can be a small band which wont' do too much for capacity relief.

At least another 20Mhz in all markets? I think anything over 40Mhz(including G) is overkill in markets where Clearwire has 50-60Mhz of continuous spectrum. 1xAdvanced has the ability to be configured to provide 4x the capacity over the same area as current 1x,  I do not believe Sprint will need to add any more 1x carriers, especially with the 1x carrier on the 800Mhz. LTE will distribute the burden off the PCS spectrum onto the BRS and 800Mhz Spectrum. 10Mhz of SMR + 20Mhz of PCS + 40Mhz of BRS is a ton of capacity. Verizon is going to be stuck with 20Mhz of 700 and only another 20-40Mhz of AWS.  Tmobile does not currently have any options outside their AWS spectrum, if it were to get burdened. 

He is only going to bang his drum louder and harder the closer we get to time for Sprint + SB vote. I wonder what's next from this bipolar skitzoid.

 

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This could be the real reason why Sprint is thinking about extending the Softbank-Sprint vote. If Sprint swallows up Clearwire, then it is impossible for Dish to spas on Clearwire if the Softbank deal become the clearly preferred offer. I truly believe Dish's 4.40 offer was a response to CFIUS approving Softbank's ability to buy Sprint.