ChadBroChillz

I thought it brought up a lot of good points like how the government would have more oversight with CFIUS involved compared to Dish and how vodafone and DT are both using Huawei equipment overseas. I especially liked how they exposed the ties that dish has to the senators who have been voicing their "concerns".

The comments were annoying, but I am sure Ergen has a team of people who just spam his BS fear mongering.

“So there is an odd set of incentives for the U.S. government, where they might actually have more regulatory authority if they let [the SoftBank] transaction go through,”Stewart Baker, former head of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), the agency that reviews foreign mergers, told Gardner this week at the House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing.

I think this could actually backfire on Dish.  Softbank has now promised to remove all Huawei equipment at their expense, promised to not use Chinese equipment in the future, and given the US Government veto to one of New Sprint's board members, who is in change of national security compliance.  That is just what Softbank has promised, the CFIUS could ask for more stipulations. Dish has not made these promises, nor could the government impose these rules as a part of their merger with Sprint.

Or they could pay a lot less than that to move Wimax phone totting people to LTE. Although I am sure Son is exaggerating. And I thought Clear's Huawei equipment was approved by the feds.

It was, but I think the government does not want a major national carrier, especially with government contracts, using Huawei equipment, even if it is not near core infrastructure. I also think Softbank is just trying to calm any worries of national security before they become a problem. Dish would not have been immune to these problems. Tmobile had to agree to let the government know 30 days in advance if they decide to switch network vendors. 

Looks like I was wrong about the iPhone 5.

 

http://s4gru.com/index.php?/blog/1/entry-322-jack-of-all-bands-iphone-5-fcc-oet-review/

 

It does have 1xA support.

I would say all LTE phones and most smartphones from 2011 support 1xAdvanced. The 4 and 4s also support 1xA, since they are using the variants of the MDM 6600. 

While a phone with HD voice will have 1xA in it, you do not need HD voice to have 1xA. HD voice has more to do with voice codec support. Most phones that support 800 also support 1xA. The big indicator I have seen is Evdo rev b support.

http://www.howardforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=70393&d=1304602440

That's a PDF with info on 1x. It also has chips that support 1xA. IPhone 5 had the MDM9615 chip.

1xAdvanced also has the ability to be configured for 3x coverage of traditional 1x or 4x the capacity.

800 at the edge of sprint service will likely be configured for coverage, while urban sites/PCS site will get configured for capacity.

Sprint will not need as many PCS 1x channels as before, but I do not believe they have had many deployed.

As long as sprint is buying clear, they will have to pay the 1 billion to remove huawei equipment.  When Sprint was independent, they were not allowed to use Huawei equipment. Softbank has no effect on that. I cannot wait until the FCC and CFIUS approve the deals. That way Dish only has the legs of its deal to stand on.  Dish knows that they cannot compete on a level playing field. 

What happens in October that would make it that Sprint doesn't need 75%?

 

Robert via Nexus 7 with Tapatalk HD

I believe he is referring to when the standstill agreement ends, which will allow Sprint to change the bylaws removing the 75% requirement.  I believe the standstill agreement ends near the end of Novermber though. 

It makes much more sense than anything else that I have seen proposed.

I just do not think Dish is in this for Clearwire's network. It was pretty obvious from their press conference that they want to hit the millions of households who do not have access to highspeed internet above 6Mbps. Clearwire was just the cheapest option to force Sprint into adding them to their Network Vision. Maybe if they got Tmobile's network and the surplus EBS.

I tend to think that the next iPhone will have TD-LTE support of some sort because 700 million China Mobile customers would be too hard to pass up.  Apple will have to cater to China Mobile and SoftBank more now, as China Mobile and SoftBank merged with Sprint would bump AT&T back down to third in global iPhone supply. 

 

Band 26 isn't that hard to add since it's more or less a superset of Cellular band 5 that the iPhone 5 already supports for LTE.  By moving to the MDM9625, the iPhone 5S would add carrier aggregation and the ability to support up to 7 LTE bands.  I could easily see an Asia Pacific model that supports TD-LTE for SoftBank, Sprint, and China Mobile.  

I know they do not use Band 41, but doesn't Europe also use spectrum in the 2.5Ghz-2.7Ghz spectrum? That should boost the likelihood of antennas broadcasting that frequency being included in the iPhone. 

I do not think Sprint was trying to convince those guys. Supposedly Sprint and Clearwire were working with Mount Kellett and other shareholders to raise their bid. The group has 18.2 % of Clearwire's public shares.  That would give Sprint 44.2 % of the minority vote without looking at the smaller investors. 

They have to do their due diligence. They do not want to open themselves up to lawsuits from their shareholders for not picking the best offer. I would not worry. As long as Dish wants to fund the merger by putting debt onto Sprint's balance sheet, I believe Sprint will continue to back Softbank's offer. Sprint has to think about short term and long term value for its shareholders.   

I am still trying to figure out Sprint's reasoning behind choosing to support the 700Mhz A-C block for roaming instead of Verizon's 750Mhz.  Are their any carriers actually building out LTE on the A-block? I assumed all of them joined Verizon's Rural America program. It would be great for Sprint if they could forge a nationwide LTE roaming agreement with these smaller carriers. 

So based on all of this who later down the road from now will be in the best position? I do not want Sprint to fall behind again when they chose to do the WiMax thing.

AWS4 is Dish's spectrum. 

I wonder how many of these Ergen has filed? I think the FCC has these automatically sent to the trash by now.

Fantastic point. Sprint has leveraged itself to the edge of financial health. Dish's credit rating today will not be the same as Dish's credit rating after it secures the 9.5b it needs. For example, s&p's current rating on dish is BB-. S&P's rating on sprint is B+. On scale, those ratings sit right next to one another with dish as "non investment grade speculative" and sprint as "highly speculative".

 

So the question remains: How will the 9.5b affect Dish's credit rating? Its already almost a merger of equals, which terrifies me.

I think the bondholders trigger was what Masayoshi Son was referring to when they stated Sprint would not have enough money to finish Network Vision. Sprint would have to pay those bondholders 101% plus all the interest at once, but I believe Sprint would have a difficult time finding new banks willing to finance, when they just added 9.5 billion to their books, which likely means the money has to come from the Network Vision funds.

If I'm not mistaken, the Sprint board would need to accept the Dish offer and then recommend it to the shareholders, who would then vote on it. The SoftBank deal has already been accepted, and Sprint would be on the hook for somewhere close to $1 billion ($600M payment to SoftBank and ~$400M in transaction/legal fees) if the deal falls through, making it unlikely that Sprint will back out.

Do not forget the Sprint bondholders. They do not officially have a vote, but it would be a huge snag for the possible Sprint-Dish merger, if they refuse to amend their agreements to allow Dish to take control without triggering the forced buyback.

I know you guys are deadset against Dish. But I have yet to see what Softbank's plans are for Sprint and Clearwire. Clearwire has a lot of spectrum and I would hate to see most of it wasted. It cannot be all used for mobile. It will be extremely expensive to overlay all of Sprint's network with it. At least we know what Dish wants it for: fixed braodband, mobile and VOD/OTT video. What is Softbank/Sprint going to do with it? Are they going to become a media company? If they don't, they they should get rid of most of it to Dish or Verizon, get some money for it and reduce Clearwire's debt. Same thing with Clearwire's network. Sell it to Dish and reduce Celarwire's debt. Then, either go for T-Mobile, or obtain some PCS-H or 600MHz spectrum.

Masayoshi Son has said they will not reveal their plans until the deal is done, but considering that they are already talking about carrier aggregating on Clearwire's spectrum, I believe they definitely have something big planned for said spectrum.

I agree that I would hate to see the spectrum wasted, but we are not even sure if Sprint will renew those leases. Sprint could let them expire/sell them and just focus on the BRS+ adjacent EBS to reach 60Mhz in major markets. I do not believe Sprint would have a problem selling Dish Clearwire's excess spectrum and network, however, I do not believe that is what Dish wants. Dish actions lead me to believe that they want a partnership similar to lightsquared, but for capacity as payment. Their plans do not work with just Clearwire's network. They would need a nationwide network. I doubt they are going to put the capital to build their own, plus Network Vision gives them a strong platform to build on.

I actually like Dish's strategy. I think it brings something unique to the table, but Spish would be up to their eyeballs in debt.

I think it would be smarter to just buy nTelos than to step on their feet by rolling out with 3G/4G when the exclusivity is done.

Reduced roaming bill + expanded coverage + 500k subscribers who are mostly postpaid.

Sprint needs 75% of the votes with the current bylaws. However, after November 21, the standstill agreement expires and Sprint with just a super majority could change the bylaws to reduce the number of votes needed. If the deal fails, Sprint would have 68% of the votes, according to Masa Son's press conference from a few days ago.

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2013/02/04/clwr-davidson-cuts-to-hold-sprint-likely-to-prevail/

Your fantasy would probably hit a wall, when the FCC tells Clear Spish, that they must divest spectrum or they cannot participate in future auctions( although I think being leveraged up their eyeballs would prevent that anyways).

Dish spectrum + Clearwire Spectrum + Sprint spectrum puts Sprint as the highest spectrum owner by a mile. ATT/Verizon would furiously fight to get Sprint blocked from future spectrum acquisitions.

Clearwire's spectrum is more than enough for capacity, especially with small cells to fill hot spot and coverage gaps. The smarter move would be to forget Dish's spectrum and focus on getting the 600Mhz and possibly the PCS-H block.

So the shareholders vote on June 12th. What's the likelihood that the FCC/FBI/CIA/NSA/KAOS give approval before that date? Would it matter?

 

TS

Not sure bout the FBI/CIA/NSA/NTSF:SD:SUV, but I believe the "shot clock" by the fcc ends on May 29th.

I think it would make a considerable difference. With all regulatory matters behind them, they would just need shareholders to vote for the deal for the deal to be finalized. Dish would still have to wait for the regulators, which is probably why they continue to beg the FCC to postpone the process.

Investors would have to wait possibly a year if they go with the Dish deal, while the softbank deal would put money in their pockets in days if the regulatory approval is done.

Sprint has sold around 10 million iPhones since launch. The rumor was that they had to sell either 25 or 30 million iPhones. Assuming they average the same amount, they would hit 26.67 million iPhones by the end of the 4 years. I am sure the profits from the current iPhone buyers can cover the 5 million or so iPhones they missed, so I would not worry about Sprint missing their iPhone mark, plus I have a feeling sprint will really turn it up after the Softbank/Sprint/Clearwire deal finishes.