Posts Tagged ‘nextel’

Sprint ready to offload Nextel’s iDen

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

According to Reuters, the latest twist in the saga that is Sprint is set to get rid of the iDen network it picked up when it acquired Nextel a few years ago.

Sprint has really been struggling all round for some time and a sale of a network that was superceded in both technology and popularity terms a while back makes a lot of sense - the only question is who would buy it? The same reasons that Sprint would want to get rid of the iDen network are reasons why it would be hard to find a potential buyer.

In a recent filing, Sprint said it wants will consider “”improving operations, making additional investments, entering into strategic partnerships and considering potential divestitures” when it comes to iDen. I suspect Sprint would rather favour the latter two options.

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Clearwire, Sprint give birth to new WiMax venture

Thursday, May 8th, 2008

It looks like there’s life in US WiMax yet. US providers Clearwire and SprintNextel have agreed to combine their WiMax networks into a new company, under the Clearwire brand.

They’ve got some powerful friends on board too: Intel, Google, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks have agreed to finance the new company to the tune of $3.2 billion. Sprint will remain the biggest shareholder in the company with 51 percent.

After all the trouble with its Xohm WiMax network Sprint has been having lately, a lot of people had predicted a swift death for the technology. Not so. It seems Google and Intel, both of whom have a lot of clout and a vested interested in seeing the technology succeed, are determined to keep the network going. Hopefully this is the shot in the arm mobile WiMax needs.

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Deutsche Telekom to buy Sprint?

Monday, May 5th, 2008

According to German paper Der Spiegel, Deutsche Telekom is considering going shopping and acquiring US carrier Sprint Nextel, with a view to merging it with its own T-Mobile USA.

It’s a fascinating rumour but I’m not entirely convinced that this isn’t just an idle ‘what if?’ scenario from some Deutsche Telekom exec. Granted, for anyone considering an acquisition of Sprint, it’s a great time - the company’s been struggling of late, its share price is down and it could be snapped up for a bit of a bargain price. It would mean a big step up for T-Mobile in the US, catapulting it into the top tier of operators.

But the major reason to say no to such a deal? The tech. T-Mobile uses GSM, while Sprint Nextel uses CDMA and is trying to get a WiMax network up and running at the same time. The integration problems don’t put any acquisition in a favourable light.

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Sprint: looking at Deutsche buy, Nextel spin off?

Monday, March 10th, 2008

Rumour mills are great fun. And there’s been some great rumours coming out of the US mobile industry in the last couple of days, both concerning Sprint Nextel and what might be its next move in the face of some ongoing financial troubles.

The first rumour comes from suggestions by analysts that T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom might be interesting in buying Sprint to stave off pressuring resulting from the US price cutting frenzy. It doesn’t sound an altogether likely scenario to me. There’s the question of all the incompatible technologies - T-Mobile’s GSM, and Sprint’s CDMA and WiMax. Granted, T-Mobile would get some more customers, but Sprint it losing those at a rate of knots and would land itself in a technological and regulatory minefield.

The other rumour, courtesy of Seeking Alpha is that Sprint has hired Morgan Stanley with a view to spinning off Nextel, with an announcement due shortly. While this would seem equally daft at first glance - Sprint would lose all the investment it put into Nextel not long after acquiring it - there could be some sense here. After the massive writedown Nextel generated in the last set of Sprint’s results, why not admit it didn’t work out, give up trying to merge the two companies and their networks and just focus on CDMA and WiMax?

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Posted in Operators | Comments

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