bigsnake49

Sprint and T-mobile have been talking about a merger since at least 2011 way before Softbank was even in the pic. Between T-Mobile using desperate measures to aquire subs and the fact that their stock has gone up 28%, this is going to be an expensive buyout for Softbank.

Oh way back in early 2000's they were very interested in a three way merger between Sprint, Alltel and USCC. From what my sources in the investment banking community told me, the discussions were very advanced. Forsee got cold feet and the Carlson family never forgave him and Sprint. I was very pro this particular merger at that time.

They have been losing customers for a little while. They might want to sell while the selling is good!

Again, they will have plenty of BRS spectrum. They will have plenty of AWS and PCS, enough for a long time. They will not have enough lower MHz spectrum.

Well it seems that the banks are ready to finance the bid: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304603704579325031776937484?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304603704579325031776937484.html Interestingly, according to the articles, one of the options is for T-Mobile to acquire Sprint rather than the other way around. I guess the large investors like their aggressiveness. Don't be suprised if their management team prevails. I expect that one of the first victims of the merger is the divestment of the EBS spectrum to Dish and others. Also somewhere down the road the divestment of the T-Mobile network without the spectrum to Dish.

They don't have 40Mhz of downlink. They have a 20+20Mhz allocation.

Why liightsquared?

Sprint cannot advertise hard because they have not finished their network in many places. If they have then they should! They have to be selective where they advertsise.

Re: AT&T, they can refarm their CLR and PCS spectrum, so "don't cry for me, Argentina".

Just as a hypothetical, deep in the future, can Sprint get hold of the 2.5Mhz left over from the lower CLR band, since each CLR allocation is 12.5MHz? Can we somehow rationally reallocate the spectrum so that each carrier gets 10+10Mhz?

I love horse trading....

Yes, they are going to be a player in the Sprint/T-Mobile saga. Maybe Son can acquire them as well?

It also requires areas with spare/little used 5MHz blocks.

Interestingly, Bye said that Sprint is already in the process of refarming some of its CDMA EV-DO services on its 1900 MHz spectrum for LTE. He said the carrier is refarming some unused 5x5 MHz EV-DO channels to LTE in an effort to improve and reinforce its LTE network. Read more: Sprint's Bye: '2014 is the year' - FierceWireless http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/sprints-bye-2014-year/2014-01-08#ixzz2poe7K76M Has anybody seen any evidence of that?

The spectrum that Dish has is not in any of the usual bands. Verizon already has spectrum in 4 bands: 700MHz, 850, 1900 and AWS. Dish, absent a deal with Sprint will have spectrum in two bands. Verizon will probably bid in the 600MHz auction and the AWS-2 or 3 auctions. So unless they are willing to get rid of Dish's spectrum, they will possibly end up with 8 bands. Yikes !!!!!

That it does mean!

Yes, I'm well aware of it's components, but it's non-sensical, just like Cisco, Cienna, etc. Something that sounds new and is easy on the tongue.

What does Verizon even mean, anyway?

How would you integrate the two networks under the following assumptions: 1. T-Mobile buys 700Mhz block A 2. No deal with Dish for their AWS-4/PCS-H 3. No 600MHz spectrum I want to hear some creative solutions.

It's very expensive to buy the contract out and then offer them discounts on the phone.

I would go for 10,000 and state highways of a certain daliy traffic.

Contracts have a way of making them more entrenched. So do phones technologically locked to a particularly band or bands.

No matter how good its network will become, it's too late to get back customers. It will stop losing them. If it drops it's prices then it wil not have money for network upgrades.

There is no way either T-Mobile or Sprint will make substantial gains against the big two. Yeah, T-Mobile may gain back some of the customers it lost the last 2-3 years, but is unsustainable. T-Mobile lost money (granted not much) last quarter. The iPhone does not come cheap. So in a stalemated mature market what do you do? Yeah everybody will make some money, but where is the growth going to come from. I am fully for the merger. I also would be fully for putting some buildout requirements for at least the semirural areas, as in, the resulting entities have to cover all highways and towns over a certain population.

In some places as much as 100Mhz of EBS. They also have appoximately 60Mhz of BRS. 2000-2020MHz is not as good as 700 or 800Mhz in building penetration, but it's great for capacity. Hopefully T-Mobile will buy 700Mhz block A from Verizon and smaller spectrum holders and then Sprint will inherit it if they merge.