WillM

Saw a story earlier on Bloomberg where Masa recently tried to take SoftBank private. The number mentioned was $70 billion. I guess he's not happy with the stock price. The main reason mentioned for the depressed price was the crushing debt load and the drag from Sprint.

Did you really think they would do that? Over 70% of their profits come from phones. It's how they got $200 billion in the bank. The last thing they want is declining iPhone prices. Better to offer interest free loans or lease deals to keep prices high which is what they are getting into.

Is the carrier making money on a handset when they have to give you a 0% interest loan for 24 months? I doubt it. Plus now they don't have to offer support for those that lease from Apple.

How so? Isn't it just a lease? Also, diesel fuel needs a lot of compression to ignite.

Yes. I have an iPhone 6 Plus. They still haven't finished Network Visoon so I'm not gonna hold my breathe for the latest build out. The Jersey markets are way behind schedule if you ask me.

We were down in Mt. Laurel area along Rt. 73 the other week and service was kind of disappointing. At the shopping center with the Apple Store and LL Bean you would sometimes have LTE outside but once inside you would drop down to 3G which at three bars was more or less useless. Page loads were over a minute. Tried toggling airplane mode a bunch of times but it didn't really help and just seems exhausting after awhile. Even LTE seemed sluggish. It's the same pattern as where I live. Anything built within the last 15 years will most likely have subpar coverage.

That's just an excuse. Sprint just hasn't bothered to expand in a lot of areas.

Bridgewater Commons but the same goes for GSP.

And what happens if the residuals on iPhones don't match predictions? It could be a bit of a risk for the company. Lots of auto companies got burned on leasing.

The Radio Shack strategy in my part of Jersey seems like a waste of time and money. They shut all the ones in good locations and kept the ones in the out of the way, rundown strip malls. And the ones they kept they have just hung a Sprint banner in the window. No remodels to be seen yet. Some of these are so bad I hope they don't waste anymore money. The mall closest to us is upscale-ish. It has an Apple Store and a Microsoft store as well as three corporate locations for the other three carriers. There was a Radio Shack there. Not in the best part of the mall but pretty good. They closed it. Of course there used to be a Nextel store which was converted to Sprint. That was closed years ago. They'd rather turn the resellers loose on you around here. There is lots of retail space available in good locations around here. Why not find space where people are instead of teaming up with a washed up brand in yesterday's locations?

I understand your point. It would hurt. It's why you don't want to be a one horse town. KC should try to plan for this the best they can instead of getting blindsided. They must have known though that if the merger went through it was highly probable they would they would have lost out in the end to Bellevue. When Sprint bought Nextel what happened to Reston? Of course Northern Virginia survived just fine. If Sprint starts to downsize that location that should be a warning sign. Of course if he doesn't sell or merge maybe he will be content with the current location for now. And yes, we are more fortunate here in the burbs around NYC but we are losing more than we are bringing in. Just a few months ago Mercedes Benz USA announced they are leaving after almost 50 years in North Jersey. They are going to Atlanta. Most jobs aren't transferring either.

I know it's big but what are they going to do? Hold them hostage? I live in New Jersey. We've seen huge campuses come and go. Mostly go as of late. If Softbank wants to leave or scale down they will do it no matter what the state says. All they can do is offer financial incentives but that's not the issue in this case. It's the location.

Then by all means load up!! It's just not for me. I'm not saying it's impossible but it's risky. And Bank of America received a massive bailout from the Feds.

Maybe he'll keep it or maybe he'll patch it up to where he can sell it. Only time will tell. I don't really care about the stock as I prefer not to own shares that trade in the low single digits. Too risky for me. They are there for a reason and history shows they rarely recover and are prone to being wiped out in a reorganization. If you think you can figure out patterns to trade it and make money good for you.

Didn't the little guy want the HQ on the West Coast so it's closer to Japan? If the merger went through it would've been moved to Bellevue. Miami is going in the wrong direction. Of course we don't even know how long he'll own Sprint at this point so who knows. I would think the Kansas HQ will be gone at some point.

Spark or Spark Mobile? Softbank? Not really feeling those. Just don't sound right. Kind of like Moland Springs And anything with U.S. in it is horrible. I'd rather go with Clear to be honest. It's not a bad name and nobody really knew about them as they barely had service anywhere so it's not really tarnished. If they do rebrand it will be a damn shame. From a branding standpoint the Sprint name and Pin Drop logo are the best in the business in my opinion. Same for the colors. I keep thinking if Softbank and Masa had spent a few bucks advertising that Sprint was under new ownership and that they were taking a new course then we wouldn't be having this conversation. Who knows? Instead he made ridiculous boasts and wasted time pursuing an impossible merger.

Did anyone read the comments on that WSJ article? There is an interesting one by some guy who was considering doing some work for ALU.

I always hope moves like this will put downward pressure on handset prices. I saw a comment on another site about how Apple at it's keynotes like to put up the subsidized prices. So they will show prices from Free to $299 for base configurations. If nobody is offering contracts anymore will they have to show the real prices and how will people react to that? Plus if the bill is simplified to the point where it just shows service and phone installment will that make people think twice about the phone they choose. I guess we'll find out. Of course with these plans the out the door cost is much lower so maybe it won't stop people.

We just got back from a vacation in Maine and did pretty good coverage wise. We were mostly on the coast up to Camden and I didn't have any real complaints. I did notice my wife's phone on AT&T in Portland really struggled at times. Her signal was fine but really slow speeds. It was a better experience than we had last year down in the York area where I could barely hold a signal in a lot of areas.

Maybe they've gotten more lately but all three markets are still at about a 70% acceptance rate for LTE. You would think it would be higher given how long it's been going on. I love seeing updates but to be honest these markets won't really improve until they get the densification program going.

That's good to hear. We won't be farther north than Camden but I'm sure it will help.

We're heading up to Maine on Monday. Hope to benefit from this. Last time we were there the native coverage was pretty poor.

What makes you think Android will change anything? Nokia's phone business was circling the drain long before Microsoft came along. Anyway, I believe the deal with Microsoft allows them to get back into the business in a few years though I wouldn't hold my breath. At best they might do something like that iPad mini ripoff that is available in Asia.

I think you can make the argument they don't care about the entire state but Central and South a little more so. If you look at the LTE acceptance rates for the markets it's just sad. It's basically a prepaid market for them at this point. Given the population density you would think they could make a go of it.

Anyone experiencing choppy incoming audio? I've had it more than a few times while at home. We use FIOS. It's impossible to have a conversation so I end up turning off wifi and calling the person back. It would be nice if it could hand off. It's also happened a few other places. Mostly public wifi.