JeffDTD

Agree with Chaplin 100% . Almost sounded like he dipped into our thread here today haha

I interpret this as verizon trying to ensure that sprints bid for clear is deemed "undervalued" and nothing more. It is a play to keep sprint from holding too many advantageous spectrum cards

True. As much as the board has fought to keep the name and legacy alive, he would most certainly rip the name and culture limb from limb.

Uncle Charlie doesn't do anything that isn't disruptive. This is not the first bid he's made for sprint, its just the first one that he's taken public. Its a shame that he didn't make his "best offer" when the time was right to make his best offer. Instead, he played his typical scrooge card, lost, got butt hurt because he couldn't get his way with Clear, and so he gets all nuts and just decides "If I can't have my way, I'll just buy you out ! All of you!! Mine mine mine mine mine mine". Charlie would clearly be the new President, CEO and Fuhrer of a combined Sprint/Dish. Hopefully he'd be smart enough to keep Hesse's customer service folks though, as having the worst customer service in wireless isn't acceptable. As far as Hesse, I'd guess Charlie would offer him a job as coffee boy or get lost. In all seriousness, on paper, the bundled services discount opportunity is exciting. Capacity wise, it would come up short for heavy wired ISP users, but its a great opportunity no less to grab business from the big guys. I do wonder what the overall financial health of a Dish+Sprint entity would end up being. The cash Charlie is bringing to the table is all borrowed and leveraged against the value of Dish. I'm not confident this created entity is one that would have huge amounts of cash on hand for future network build out. If its infrastructure Charlie wants, the concentration of rural customers he has also aren't necessarily going to be well served or served at all by Sprint's site infrastructure. He will still need to bring billions to the table in the future, which was what had me so excited about Softbank.

Island runner

Lap Band

Also read they are going to roll out contract free device financing without reduced monthly costs. If that happens, ATT copycats and Sprint raises prices while preserving its value proposition. And everyone said higher sprint prices were the end of the world.... sigh

The tmo comparisons are just ridiculous. If you lived in an urban area that is being upgraded by tmo to lte, you ALREADY have hspa+.... why would u care? Oh thats right, you wouldnt. Lte is good for spectral efficiency. No real world usage gain for users since its only touching their high speed locales. Pitting tmo and sprint's delpoyment of lte against each other is absolutely worthless. Oranges to canelopes. And digiblur, dont piss on anyones fallacies. You know good and well that Mr. Hesse has a big black briefcase with a big magic red button and when everything is ready, all the employees at HQ gather round Kim Jong Korean lunatic style to watch him push the magic LTE button and all applaud in joy

I wonder what kind of approval Clear must obtain from the shareholders, if any, in order to do another debt offering? Seems like the rate would be ridiculously high considering their questionable future and pending acquisitions, etc. At this point, I expect someone to file suit over breach of contract or worse if this circus gets any louder. Regarding Captain Howdy: Ergen is going to demand the same crummy, stingy and undervalue deal terms from T-mobile that we can assume he offered Sprint before they hitched Softbank. I hope they string him along and they tell him to pound sand. He's clearly had some wet circus dream about purchasing some Clear Spectrum and using it as bait to marry T-mobile. Its strange to me that he would think any company, given his reputation, would want to cede any substantial control of itself to him.

Given the liquidity needed for a network buildout, he could spend half of the 10 billion just trying to properly meet the timeframe on his spectrum. Lets just cross our fingers that he's got his tinfoil hard on for Metro or something else besides Clear. Unfortunately, when Charlie wants something, he kicks and screams and raises hell to the bitter end. What disappoints me is that anything he acquires will be infested with the Dish employee/customer culture, which is push/shove/die mentality.

What a carnival

Ding ding ding....

Verizon spent more than 9 billion on the 700mhz auction. ATT more than 6 billion. Regionals in certain areas also spent a lot to get what they wanted. Verizon and ATT could and would have spent more if a 3rd national carrier was competing in that auction. It wasn't a fail safe for sprint.

Odd. Wonder if cspire is cleaning up its books and maximizing returns before it puts itself up for grabs? and what ever happened with cspire's federal anti trust suit against att and others? Perhaps this is evidence of friendly talks between att and cspire http://www.cedmagazine.com/news/2012/06/at-t-rivals-square-off-on-interoperability

If Crest wants Clear to stay independent, they need to work how to make Clear sustainably profitable, which will take more than a small smattering of LTE sites. I still cannot understand how or why Clear never went on the same LTE/Wimax wholesale roadshow that Lightsquared did, considering how successful Lightsquared was. And since Sprint will sink a tri-mode chip in their smartphones before a Clear will start increasing Sprint user subsidies again (vs. decreasing ones as wimax devices are deactivated) exactly how does Clear sustain and pay for further buildout after the financing? More financing from Crest? Pissing on Sprint isn't going to help them long term unless they plan on bringing a lot more to the table.

That smiley made me think of Verizon. I'd like to have a red devil smiley and a blue devil smiley for appropriate usage. Since any bid ATT made to acquire Vodafone would require Voda's share of Verizon be divested, I have to wonder if Verizon isn't secretly also smiling at the thought of ATT leveraging itself up to its eyeballs. If Verizon felt challenged by ATT's moves on Voda or even jealous, one might wonder why Verizon chooses to partner with ATT and buy their share at face value instead of refusing to cooperate with ATT, as lack of cooperation would make the acquisition even more difficult for ATT. Further, if Verizon felt compelled to protect Voda, they have cash on hand to infuse in Voda in return for any number of incentives. Flipside, Verizon may be more desperate to rid itself of Vodafone than it is to be adversarial towards ATT.

Unfortunately, it doesnt seem like a joke. Now, the elephant in the room is whether England, the european union or whomever the appropriate governing body would approve a takeover. A great deal of scrutiny would be shown to it. There would also be nothing exciting about it from an american consumer perspective. ATT isnt going to give you super cheap roaming rates or pass their savings along to the consumer.

ENJOY THE BIRTHDAY! Wish I could air deliver some good southern cookin' there for your birthday. No one should have to choose between Chicken and Ham. Earlier today I had the chicken, ham, roast and a big fat portion of mac n cheese, turnip greens, baked beans and field peas.

Would love to see a late Friday FCC release this evening approving the buyout.

The great thing about S4GRU is that it advocates users to go with the network that best suites their needs, regardless of it being a Sprint site. As you already probably know, you can pick up 4GB to share on ATT for $70 while each smartphone would cost you $40 a piece. 2 smartphones puts you at $150 a month before taxes vs. Sprints $149.99 before taxes. If 4GB will meet your needs and ATT's network is great, give it a go.

If ATT seems attractive to you and you can live with a low bucket of data, pick up a new number and ATT and give it a spin for a few days. Be sure to do it within 1.5-2 weeks or less from the end of you sprint billing cycle. You could be in one of the areas where ATT has built out and has capacity, or you could be in an area of strained capacity. Some people report fantastic call quality on ATT, others (like where I am) have a gargled , hissing call dropping mess. Should you decide not to stay with ATT, they're going to hit you for the activation fee and a month of service still... for that reason, you could always try the ATT network via a prepaid provider.

OP, you need to pick up the phone and call sprint. They will either be able to confirm the outage, or they will open a ticket. Make sure you are talking to network support/tech support and make sure that you get a ticket number. If you report the outage to them and they agree, they will credit your account for the days without service once service is restored. Sprint has been proactive to do this for customers experiencing outages.