bigsnake49

Sprint has lost just shy of $13 billion over the past 5 years. As long as the company is bleeding money, they will need to incur more debt or offer new equity to keep infusing cash into the company.

I doubt it. For starters $10 to $20 billion isn't enough to outright buy the company or even Softbank's stake. Furthermore, Sprint as an acquisition much less  an investment doesn't seemingly fit in with Buffett's investing strategy or recent (past 25 or so years) investing history.

 

If Masa and Marcelo were talking to Buffett about Sprint, my guess is it would be something along the lines of preferred stock with common stock warrants like what he did with Bank of America and before that GE and Goldman Sachs. Buffett gets a near guaranteed return on a portion of the nearly $90 billion in cash Berkshire is sitting on and Sprint gets a cash infusion to do with as they please. I'm not really sure that Buffett is the best source of funding though as Sprint still hasn't tapped out other cheaper options i.e. the Spectrum backed vehicles.

Be careful with the $13B in losses. That is not necessarily cash that they have lost. 

Why would Buffett and Malone invest their Billions in Sprint?

 

When Sprint's parent company has billions of their own. Masa is starting tech funds and all sorts of things around the world but wants independent billionaires to basically gamble with their money.

Softbank is prohibited from investing further in Sprint by the banks that loaned them the money to buy Sprint.

Maybe Masa should sell all of his stake to a buyer that's actually going to invest in the company. Not just sit on the company as he's doing with minimal investment hoping to buy out T-Mobile. So that he can create a wireless market with only 3 players to milk the American consumers out of billions of dollars.

If they buy some/all of his stake in the company and no new stock is issued, that does not provide Sprint with new capital for investment. Just Softbank getting some of their money out of Sprint to pay back the banks. If new stock is issued by Sprint when money is invested directly in Sprint then money rolls into their coffers to pay back debt and to invest in the network.

Would that get Softbank around the covenants with the Japanese banks? Because if it wouldn't then Softbank cant invest that money into sprint.

 

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Yep.

It can't be a loan. Sprint's balance sheet is already messed up. Market caps is what the market believes the company to be valued at. If you think it is under valued by 20 billion you should invest.

 

 

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If Buffett buys Sprint stock it will probably be from the 80% that Softbank owns. It will not be new stock so there will not be a dilution.

Because of a confluence of factors -- a hellbent focus on wireless airlink efficiency at the expense of robustness, a priority shift to higher frequencies with greater available bandwidth, and a seeming decline in device RF performance with the dominance of internal antenna smartphones -- the unfortunate reality is that LTE and, by association, VoLTE may never achieve the same voice coverage as that of CDMA1X.  Densification in rural areas may not come or not be enough.

 

If I ran the zoo, I long would maintain one CDMA1X, EV-DO, or W-CDMA base carrier in low band spectrum as a last resort fallback for voice and minimal data.

 

AJ

I have no problem with having Sprint keep a partial WCDMA channel for voice fallback. Not CDMA 1x though. CDMA 1x is dead. WCDMA is not yet plus they can roam on AT&T or T-Mobile.

Well there is still a Charter connection via Malone in these talks.

 

Robert

Yeah Malone owns Liberty Media who owns a substantial chunk of Charter.

Warren buffet is a great idea, I don't think charter/Comcast is dead. Maybe buffet gets part ownership for 5 billion... then with charter/Comcast contributing to a "partnership" sky is the limit! They can still buy tmo!

Supposedly Buffett wants to invest up to $10B.

So I’ve got a quick Sprint question that I’m hoping someone can answer for me.

 

Why is it that Sprint is incapable of paying equipment charges with a negative balance on our account? We have nearly 2000 dollars worth of credit on our account and yet every month we have a notice that our bill is “past due” because they don’t deduct equipment charges from your account balance. I just don’t understand why we still need to go on to the website and make a payment when we have so much credit on the account.

 

-Anthony

Because credits does not equal real money. Equipment charges need to be paid with real money since Apple or Samsung need to be paid with real money and not Sprint credits.

And they will raise prices even further. I bet they're pissed VZW lowered theirs where they did. Now VZW knows Tmo wants to go up a little more, I wouldn't be surprised if VZW pulls back on their pricing once they capture the share they're looking for. And once Tmo gets a little head room to raise further, bam!

 

Sprint, the fourth carrier, is really going to determine where prices are going to be competitively. We see the Top 3 will push the pricing up. I've never been for a Tmo and Sprint marriage. But I'm getting more and more against it. I think we can see exactly what will happen without a fourth carrier.

 

It's actually quite brilliant how Legere has played millions and millions of people into thinking he was some sort of consumer advocate. The Wireless Ralph Nader. They would have blindly agreed for him to take competition out of the market, because he was so trusted to bring competition, even out of consolidation and reduced competition. But we knew he was just another corporate charlatain who just is only looking out for his corporate interest. And that is his job. But he convinced large swaths of people into believing he was looking out for them. Largely by swearing about the competition and giving away some freebies. He really played it well. "I'm gonna stick it to the Duopoly!"

 

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Sprint will raise their prices too, maybe not to the level of the other three but they will. They need revenue to pay down their debt. I, unlike you, think that T-mobile and Sprint should merge but as a condition for the merger they should cover 99% of the land area of the US with usable signal.

The rest of the technology implementation we have seen before from T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon but the implementation of C-RAN is a first for this country. C-RAN as Centralized RAN communicating with RRHs at the remote sites via fronthaul. Now it is my understanding that they have only implemented what they call 5G Evolution but it's really LTE Advanced in a few high traffic sites but I can see them implementing it all over their network. I like the C-RAN technology since it allows you to centralize your base stations in one central location and maybe colocate them with your MSC in a data center, where you can have fault tolerance, large UPS's, backup generators, much easier updating, etc. I believe that it will also lead to educed rents to the tower companies.

"Citing network upgrades that include centralized-RAN (C-RAN), 256 QAM, 4x4 MIMO and 3-way carrier aggregation, AT&T is launching 5G Evolution in parts of Indianapolis today.

AT&T said it worked closely with the city of Indianapolis to make sure AT&T’s network and infrastructure are ready to support the “technology of the future” to prepare for things like self-driving cars. The operator invested more than $350 million in its Indianapolis wireless and wired networks during 2014-2016."

http://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/at-t-launches-ultra-fast-5g-evolution-indianapolis

This was the plan all along. The uncarrier stuff was just to fluff the numbers. Now that's it's here, time to raise prices. Even in that periscope, he didn't even try to defend the price rise. He just spoke about Verizon and their taxes.

 

To this day I still don't understand why HD video streaming is not standard on the ONE plan.

 

 

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Well I think Plan A was pump and dump as in pump up the numbers and then get acquired/merge (see Nextel). Now since Sprint is putting on the brakes on a potential merger and is flirting with the cable cos, T-Mobile went with plan B and increasde prices to recover some of the lost revenue.

First of all let's distinguish between bandwidth consumed or consumption rate which is measured in MB/sec and and monthly data consumption. Pretty much every wireless technology has a fairness algorithm that does not allow one user to consume all the bandwidth to the expense of all other users. So even at the peak of bandwidth demand one user does not hog the bandwidth. On the other hand you have total data consumed in a month. Putting a limit on total monthly consumption is ineffective way to battle congestion at peak times. I personally think that the carriers should go back to differentiating between on peak/off peak data consumption because who really cares if you're watching a movie on your iPhone at 3am. Nobody else is on the network.

Now you're being facetious.

 

 

Nope, Sprint made a lot of very costly mistakes.

Just imagine if Sprint wouldnt of pulled out of spectrumco. And actually have deployed it. We would be talking something totally different now.

Yeah, imagine that! Imagine if they did not spend $35B+ on Nextel + $9B For Nextel Partners + another $9B on Affiliates. Imagine that they had actually merged with Alltel, Metro, Leap and other sundry CDMA providers instead.

Nextel International (NII Holdings) is/was a separate company.

 

AJ

SprintNextel owned and sold off their 18% share of NII holdings.

Does it support all of Sprint's LTE bands

 

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Yes, if you go on Motorola's page for the G5 Plus, it says it does support bands 25, 26, 41. Plus other bands that Sprint may roam on.

I actually got the Moto G5 Plus I got the other day so I'm okay now but thank you for the help I do appreciate it:-)

 

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Yeah the G5 Plus supports a lot more bands all over the world.

An article on Fiercewireless advocates for a 4-way tie-up between Comcast, Charter, Sprint and T-Mobile. I really don't care if Sprint and T-Mobile merge, all I want is for them to share a network. It is a lot of fixed cost and it should be a shared fixed cost.

http://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/t-mobile-could-join-a-sprint-tie-up-comcast-and-charter-analysts

hmm I 'll pass then lol I don't need ads but thank you for the suggestion.

 

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You can still get it without the ads for $229. But if you don't mind the ads it's $179.

You still need low band spectrum for coverage and  VOLTE.

Maybe Sprint can use their 800Mhz mainly for VOLTE.

If this comes to fruition what is Comcast going to do with the miserly 5x5 non-nationwide sliver of 600Mhz spectrum they bought at the auction? Can they buy the 10x10 near nationwide that Dish bought?

I am 100% good with this partnership. As has been mentioned earlier, it would be huuuuge for acquiring backhaul and could help speed up small cell/Macro deployment considerably. 

 

Also cannot ignore the huge potential for bundled wireless/home cable deals. New customer acquisitions is a big plus on both ends (more so on Sprint's side).

 

This synergy to me, makes a ton more sense than a Tmobile/Sprint deal. Which both parties can lend almost equal weight, whereas Tmobile/Sprint will require some serious consolidation in orders of magnitude

A T-Mobile/Sprint partnership would make sense from a network deployment savings standpoint. Although with having to support so many bands, I am not sure of how much savings can be realized from a combined network. Maybe they can trade AWS for PCS or vice versa. 

Just be aware that the bands it supports are rather limited. But then it's only $229.

Now it's only $179 but with lock screen ads and Amazon apps.

Sorry, I forgot to mention that LTE-U and LAA strand mounted hot spots/small cells in the 3.5 and 5GHz bands.