bigsnake49

I'm sure that Sprint will become profitable pretty soon and their investment would be worth a lot more that in the beginning.

Also remember that the yen is very strong vs the dollar so the deal in yen is much better than it could have been. Strong yen+ undervalued stock = recipe for success.

It was a non-starter because he sold them a bill of goods, a pump and dump scheme, an overcrowded network. Now of course it is the board's responsibility to check those facts out, but...

I was thinking that Dish or DirectTV might want to bid for Sprint/Clearwire to provide for an OTT/VOD play.

I guess it is an equity investment so, I hope Sprint uses it to finish their Network Vision and acquire some regionals and prepaid. I wonder if some US companies might not be awakened from their slumber and bid. My only problem would be if this was a leveraged buyout, using a company's own assets to borrow money against. In that case it only adds to the companies debt (see Alltel).

Not good. I don't like it unless they pump money into the company. They are getting Sprint too cheap.

Maybe they are holding off so that the Sprint stock can go up higher. It will go higher if the have good 3rd quarter results and also good news on LTE deployment.

If Clearwire's wholesale operation takes off then they might elect to put LTE on all their sites. So far, their main wholesale customer is Sprint and Sprint only needs offload capacity in certain markets.

They will deploy on a single 20MHz channel.

Go Yep, exactly what I was thinking. Go away money or go away spectrum.

BTW, the smartest acquisition play right now for Sprint is to merge with Dish. They have $6-7B in the bank, a stable business, although mature and they have some 40Mhz of spectrum. They could definitely use that $6-7B. Markets like headlines. Sprint has not made any.

Saleh has absolutely no right to speak. He and the previous administration got totally hoodwinked by the Nextel hoods, totally ignoring Alltel, totally ignoring opportunities to shore up their PCS spectrum holdings, etc., etc.

Ooohhh, this is getting interesting but I hope they don't overpay. Maybe they can get some go away money or spectrum from DT.

Don't look now but AT&T might be making some moves. They are quietly buying 700MHz spectrum and I'm sure they will be a participant in the 700MHz Verizon A&B sale. They are buying out WCS spectrum holders and I would not be surprised if they absorb Leap.

Yes the timing was bad for Sprint then and it would have been bad for Sprint now because of their depressed stock price. I just hope that the Sprint board starts thinking strategically, not just operationally.

Robert, although I agree with you on some of these points, the central issue is not peak speed for an empty channel, it is the ability to sustain acceptable speeds for a number of users once the channels start getting crowded. That's where having a lot of spectrum will be advantageous. Again, the point of a Sprint buying metro would be to enhance Sprint's spectrum position but also to keep the spectrum out of T-Mobile's hands.

Maybe Maybe Sprint will fix their coverage problems in Florida. It's embarrassing to have to roam on Metro but they actually have a better network in some places.

The reason for Sprint to have acquired MetroPCS and or Cricket is not necessarily for their subscribers or their spectrum, it is to keep that spectrum from their competitors. If T-Mobile starts offering unlimited LTE on 20x20 allocations what is Sprint going to do to counter them? They will run out of spectrum really quick and be forced to rely on Clearwire, which is something they did not want to do. Sprint will be losing their unlimited data marketing edge. Hesse was right to push for absorbing Metro and Cricket. T-Mobile played this masterfully. Give them credit where credit is due. This puts pressure on Sprint.

Let's face it. T-Mobile just became a much more formidable competitor at least from a spectrum point of view. If they execute properly they can inflict some damage to Sprint. Does Sprint need to respond by buying Leap and or USCC? No, not right away. I would definitely wait for the stock to rebound before doing any of that. But Sprint needs to execute on all aspects of NV and try and poach as many Metro and T-Mobile customers as they can. They need to start pressing the FCC to do something with PCS H and or partner with Dish. I know they want to keep Clearwire at arms length to cry spectrum poor at the FCC but if they do get get PCS H they need to eventually absorb it. I would like for them to explain their long term strategic vision other than execute on Network Vision.

It would be market cap + debt which in Leap's case is $4B.

The best think for Sprint if they buy USCC is to assign Sprint's own 800MHz (SMR spectrum) and form a rural corporation. USCC caters to the rural customer and have made money doing it. They can be a wholly owned subsidiary of Sprint. Meanwhile, their more urban customers can be absorbed into Sprint. Their 700MHz and AWS holdings can be sold off or traded. They do have 6M contract customers.

Yeah, but I don't think Sprint will give them MVNO status. They are going to charge them roaming fees.

According to Fiercewireless they will total an average of 76MHz in the top 25 markets. Clearly, Newco, if they go with unlimited data plans will present major problems for Sprint. Sprint will have to do something to respond.

What is really interesting to me is that of the 4 major companies, none is rushing to retire their legacy voice networks. Metro was the only one that wanted to go full blast at VOLTE. The rest are taking a very cautious approach to voice. Knowing what we know about LTE coverage vs 1x and EVDO, I don't blame them.

From what I can gather, the combined company would have about $20.5B worth of debt. DT must have used the combined proceeds of both the AT&T failed merger and the proceeds from the sale of towers to CrownCastle to write down T-Mobile USA's debt.