T-Mobile, Sprint Merger Still A Possibility Deutsche Telekom Might Own 50% Of Merged Company Tuesday Mar 08 2011 18:53 EDT Tipped by OldschoolDSL According to a new Bloomberg report, Deutsche Telekom AG has held talks with Sprint about selling T-Mobile and combining the nation's third and fourth largest wireless operators. That's really not new, considering Sprint was responding to the same rumors of a T-Mobile merger last Summer, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse at the time suggesting such a deal "makes sense." According to this new report, the talks have been "on and off," and a final deal may not be reached. Piggyback this on our exclusive report from earlier today about Sprint letting Lightsquared piggyback on Sprint's LTE build, and Sprint has been very busy with their Clearwire alternative contingency plans. Bloomberg's sources frame a Sprint merger or Clearwire spectrum purchases as an either/or proposition: quote: Talks have been on and off, and a deal may not be reached, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks are private. The companies haven’t been able to agree on the valuation of T-Mobile....T-Mobile is also discussing buying wireless spectrum from Clearwire Corp. as an alternative to a merger with Sprint, two people said. Deutsche Telekom’s Hoettges said last month that buying U.S. wireless spectrum from Clearwire is only one option for the German phone company. He ruled out an outright sale of T-Mobile in the U.S.
So, talks have included discussion of Deutsche Telekom owning about 50 percent of a combined T-Mobile USA-Sprint, or T-Mobile continuing on their own using spectrum acquired from Clearwire to fuel further network upgrades. It's not clear where any of this leaves Clearwire, though you can expect all of this to be sorted out within the next three to six months, and we may have some juicy Clearwire inside information shortly. |
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They MUST mergeATT/VZW will eat them on the higher end and Cricket, etc will eat them on the economy end. They can't stay in the middle and therefore must choose a direction.
DT will want >50% control of any form of merger though and the Feds probably won't allow that. I suspect DT will get out of the US market and dump Tmob off to Sprint. | |
| | mix join:2002-03-19 Romeo, MI GL.iNet GL-B1300 Netgear CM500
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mix
Member
2011-Mar-8 6:49 pm
Re: They MUST mergeAgreed. This is the perfect time for this, both companies are looking to jump to a new 4G platform, and it is apparently LTE. If there was anytime to bring together companies with otherwise incompatible cellular networks, it is now. I assume they will use whatever they learned from Sprint's past mistakes with the Nextel merger to their advantage too. The question is, how Clearwire fits into this? They'd all need to be on the same page, that's for sure. | |
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Re: They MUST mergeModel A: Sprint/Tmob merge, Clear sold to a cable company. If the cable companies are going to play in the wireless space long term, they'll want WiMAX, not LTE, which is controlled by the telcom industry (3GPP). WiMAX will continue to be strong globally by operators who are not part of the telcom industry and the cable companies would likely maintain the US presence.
Model B: Sprint/Tmob merge and buy Lightsquared, Clear sold to Google and maintains WiMAX?
Model C: Sprint/Tmob keep Clear and convert WiMAX to LTE, but I don't think Sprint is interested in the 2.5Ghz spectrum anymore. Is best to keep it WiMAX for ISP usage, not handset usage.
When Sprint dumps iDen, they could rollout LTE on that spectrum. Qualcomm is apparently working on a way to transtion CDMA to LTE in the PCS spectrum. Sprint could start with iDen spectrum to LTE, slowly migrate CDMA spectrum to LTE and then finally change Tmob HSPA to LTE, not necessarily in that order. | |
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mix
Member
2011-Mar-8 7:20 pm
Re: They MUST mergeThe spectrum they choose to implement LTE on will be the one that most likely supports roaming with Verizon and Metro PCS. | |
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Re: They MUST mergeNot really possible. VZW LTE is currently only on 700Mhz spectrum, of which I don't think anymore is available. However PCS spectrum is used by both Sprint, VZW and Tmob. CDMA will likely be transitioned to LTE eventually. | |
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mix
Member
2011-Mar-8 7:37 pm
Re: They MUST mergeThere are so many companies (4 now?) and so much spectrum involved, this is a bit much to think about. Everything is pure speculation. | |
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Re: They MUST mergeWell it's modeling, which is based on speculative scenarios. | |
| | | | | | | MrMasterRum Connoisseur Premium Member join:2000-12-16 St Thomas, VI |
to mix
said by mix:There are so many companies (4 now?) and so much spectrum involved, this is a bit much to think about. Everything is pure speculation. 4 isn't a lot. We are just used to our oligarchy here in the states. Whatever provides the most competition is what I want. | |
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mix
Member
2011-Mar-9 11:42 am
Re: They MUST mergeNo I meant 4 companies trying to merge operations into more of less one. That would be, Sprint, Clearwire, T-Mobile, and LightSquared. | |
| | | | | | | | | MrMasterRum Connoisseur Premium Member join:2000-12-16 St Thomas, VI |
MrMaster
Premium Member
2011-Mar-9 12:59 pm
Re: They MUST mergeoh lol,
yeah. that must be driving shareholders crazy. | |
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| | | | | | | chlenEthically Challenged Premium Member join:2001-01-16 Saratoga, NY |
to MrMaster
said by MrMaster:said by mix:There are so many companies (4 now?) and so much spectrum involved, this is a bit much to think about. Everything is pure speculation. 4 isn't a lot. We are just used to our oligarchy here in the states. Whatever provides the most competition is what I want. Technically according to Schumpeter and most modern economists an oligopoly (not oligarchy) is the best for both competition and innovation. If you have too much competition companies will be slow to innovate because they will have smaller parts of the market and thus be more vulnerable. | |
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| | | tiger72SexaT duorP Premium Member join:2001-03-28 Saint Louis, MO |
to xenophon
HSPA has legs on it, and is a very, very good step down from LTE. ATT and T-Mobile have a good point: Dropping from 100-150mbps LTE to 2.2mbps EVDO is *not* attractive when compared to dropping to 56 or 84mbps HSPA+.
Between T-Mobile and Sprint, they've got between 70-100mhz in major markets on the PCS and AWS bands. Some people tend to forget that Sprint purchased AWS spectrum too... That is perfect for continuing to deploy UMTS/HSPA+ DC coverage to replace their 2GSM and CDMA networks.
iDen would be a perfect base spectrum for broad LTE deployment, since neither TMO nor Sprint owns any 700mhz spectrum. However, there's not a ton of iDen spectrum available, that presents quite the capacity issue. Good size cells, but can't handle many users. Great for rural coverage.
This is where IMT-E (2.5-2.6ghz) comes in. That 2.6ghz spectrum could be used (and improved) in cities for LTE capacity. I continue to contend that there's no such thing as bad spectrum. Simply poor engineering. For example, notice that although ATT, T-Mobile, and Sprint all use PCS spectrum for 2G coverage, their actual 2g coverage quality in the same cities using the same spectrum can be vastly different. The same can be said of the 2.6ghz IMT-E band. When correctly deployed (ie when not trying to shave dollars off the deployment costs by pushing the limits of acceptable coverage), the 2.6ghz spectrum isn't any worse than PCS or AWS.
Additionally, IMT-E lines up with the Euro (and IMT sanctioned) standard LTE band. In essence, it means simple Euro roaming. That's extremely attractive. Sprint and Clear own something like 80-150mhz of that IMT-E spectrum. Some of that spectrum is currently being used for WiMax (up to ~ 30mhz, iirc). That leaves a boatload of spectrum (50-100mhz) for LTE use still. Mind you, most US carriers are using 20-40mhz total for their current 2g and 3g needs. So having that much spectrum would put them in an extremely competitive place as far as capacity is concerned.
If done well, a *merger* between the two companies could work out. The timing is getting better for that to happen. Generally, though, HSPA+ and LTE-Advanced are the way forward. WiMax can continue to be deployed by Clear for cable companies (maybe) or WiMax deployments could stop altogether. CDMA provides no benefits over HSPA+. In fact, HSPA+ has been designed alongside LTE to work well with LTE. HSPA+ can be used with VoIP, so engineering complications of going from PS VoiP to CS voice are mitigated. Even if they stuck to standard UMTS voice/data, it can still be used simultaneously with ease, rather than requiring dual-mode handsets like the current Sprint and VZW 4g handsets (which increases handset costs, while decreasing battery life). | |
| | | | | TechieZeroTools Are Using Me Premium Member join:2002-01-25 Lithia, FL |
Re: They MUST mergeThat's good as I don't see HSPA+ going away anytime soon --- umless they want to buyback my T-Mobile G2 and everyone else's HSPA+ equipment. | |
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to xenophon
The possibilities are endless... | |
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Cleared
Anon
2011-Mar-8 6:47 pm
Don't bother with CLEARatm Clearwire is hemorrhaging customers because they have "managed" everyone that uses Netflix. I have .25mb/s down and they claim it is because their tower is always broken. I just got a manager to admit that they are throttling customers that use more than 8-10mb a month. I used 100,000mb last month by watching a few movies and a couple TV episodes. Go to » forums.clear.com and see what people are saying. Or check out the class action lawsuit that is in the works. » classactionlawsuitsinthe ··· ottling/It would be a really bad decision for any company to even consider buying bandwidth from Clearwire because they can't handle what they have right now. | |
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cruz1
Anon
2011-Mar-8 7:00 pm
Re: Don't bother with CLEARClear isn't necessarily bad. When there are people downloading 100GB a month watching movies all day, it gets to be a problem in some areas. I'd rather have throttling than caps/overages any day.
Would you use 100GB a month from Verizon? - Lets see ... their 4G is $80/mo for first 10GB and $10/GB after that so your bill would be ... $980/mo!!!! So, Clear sounds pretty good doesn't it! | |
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to Cleared
The forums are a real wake up call. This company doesn't have the backbone capacity to feed it's towers. | |
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Move over, Barack Obama! Woo-hoot, Mr. Dennings! He is my new political hero. Go Angelo!!! | |
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djdanskaRudie32 Premium Member join:2001-04-21 San Diego, CA |
djdanska
Premium Member
2011-Mar-8 7:36 pm
Again?Ugh, how long have we been hearing this? | |
| ztmikeMark for moderation Premium Member join:2001-08-02 La Porte, IN |
ztmike
Premium Member
2011-Mar-8 7:42 pm
All abroad the fail trainI could just imagine the FAIL train that would come from Sprint buying out T Mobile, they couldn't even handle Nextel.
I guess Sprint will never learn. | |
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consumer friendly?!?has ANY company that's gotten "BIGGER" from mergers actually gotten "better" for the consumer/end user of the services? (in recent memory)
2000 - 2011?
HELL NO! | |
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Alcohol
Premium Member
2011-Mar-8 10:17 pm
Re: consumer friendly?!?ATT - Cingular worked out pretty nicely.
ATT kept the rollover policy and the consumer got a bigger range for the unlimited att to att calling.
But i agree that Tmobile and sprint won't work out. | |
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slckusr
Premium Member
2011-Mar-8 10:25 pm
Re: consumer friendly?!?those companies didnt really change though, initially att wireless was purchased by cingular. ( all policies and such changed when cingular purchased). The second time around ATT merely rebranded cingular with the deathstar logo. The original ATT wireless was an awesome wireless carrier. Then the sale to cingular really affected their services and offerings.
So yes the company does appear to be fine post merger/sales/rebrandings however it is just a shell compared to what it came from originally. | |
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to Alcohol
said by Alcohol:ATT - Cingular worked out pretty nicely.
ATT kept the rollover policy and the consumer got a bigger range for the unlimited att to att calling.
But i agree that Tmobile and sprint won't work out. Actually Bell South owned Cingular, then bought ATT. So BS owned Cingular and ATT. The ATT name was cooler , so they choose that name. | |
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jfmezei Premium Member join:2007-01-03 Pointe-Claire, QC |
jfmezei
Premium Member
2011-Mar-9 4:07 am
Availability of HandsetsA merged Sprint-T-Mobile should make damned sure that they have spectrum used by pupular handsets.
T-Mobile is limited in handset availability because its 3G is on 1700. So whenever they start to look at spectrum, they need to make sure that they are big enough to get a wide variety of handsets for their frequencies, or that they choose frequencies that are popular.
This is especially important for the onwer, T-Mobile in Germany who wants a USA network its customers can roam on. If the TMob-Sprint combo can't offer popular frequencies, then worldwide customers will be roaming on AT&T or Verizon when traveling to the USA and this defeats one of the big purposes of T-Mobile wanting a presence in the USA. | |
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