{"id":108,"date":"2011-10-11T09:33:06","date_gmt":"2011-10-11T13:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/puck.nether.net\/~jared\/blog\/?p=108"},"modified":"2011-10-11T09:33:06","modified_gmt":"2011-10-11T13:33:06","slug":"thoughts-on-t-mobile-usa-sprint-and-att","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/puck.nether.net\/~jared\/blog\/?p=108","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on T-Mobile USA, Sprint and AT&#038;T"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sprint (<a href=\"http:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/q?s=S\">S<\/a>) has seen its stock price slide 34% in the past week and is currently down 65% based on its&#8217; 52-week high. This slide has been continued as a result of the recent announcement that Sprint will convert to a LTE cellular network from the WiMAX network deployed by their partner Clearwire (<a href=\"http:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/q?s=CLWR\">CLWR<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>Some are <a href=\"http:\/\/seekingalpha.com\/article\/298744-sprinting-to-bankruptcy\">now predicting that<\/a> Sprint will be forced to file for bankruptcy due to the increased debt load they will be required to carry.<\/p>\n<p>This has consequences in other market segments, including on the AT&amp;T (<a href=\"http:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/q?s=T\">T<\/a>) and T-Mobile USA (subsidary of <a href=\"http:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/q?s=DTE.DE\">DTE.DE<\/a>) acquisition.\u00a0 I have privately predicted that I believe AT&amp;T will be on-the-hook for the $3 bln breakup fee for many months.\u00a0 There are only a few global players that have the capital available to acquire Sprint.\u00a0Sprint is a major player in the federal telecom space, consequently any of these would face blockage by the US Government as part of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.treasury.gov\/resource-center\/international\/Pages\/Committee-on-Foreign-Investment-in-US.aspx\">Treasury Department CFIUS<\/a> process.<\/p>\n<p>With the current Verizon (<a href=\"http:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/q?s=VZ\">VZ<\/a>), Sprint, AT&#038;T and T-Mobile players, the elimination of Sprint and T-Mobile as players is not something the Department of Justice will stand for in their antitrust case against AT&#038;T.<\/p>\n<p>Prediction:<\/p>\n<p>With the pending credit downgrades of Sprint, I do not expect the pressure to decrease on them and the potential for an acquisition to be unlikely.  The most likely situation I see is the T-Mobile acquisition to not be completed, Sprint to file for bankruptcy in the second half of 2012.  The fate of T-Mobile USA is uncertain, perhaps Sprint can shift their commitments from Clearwire to T-Mobile, but adding a 3rd incompatible network (CDMA vs iDEN vs GSM\/LTE) is going to be a major capital process regardless.  Short of splitting the wireless and fixed network assets to promote value, I&#8217;m not sure anyone wants to pick up the disparate technologies and assets to continue an integration plan.<\/p>\n<p>DISCLOSURE: Author owns none of the stocks mentioned in this article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sprint (S) has seen its stock price slide 34% in the past week and is currently down 65% based on its&#8217; 52-week high. This slide has been continued as a result of the recent announcement that Sprint will convert to a LTE cellular network from the WiMAX network deployed by their partner Clearwire (CLWR). Some [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-telecom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/puck.nether.net\/~jared\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/puck.nether.net\/~jared\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/puck.nether.net\/~jared\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/puck.nether.net\/~jared\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/puck.nether.net\/~jared\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/puck.nether.net\/~jared\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111,"href":"https:\/\/puck.nether.net\/~jared\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions\/111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/puck.nether.net\/~jared\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/puck.nether.net\/~jared\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/puck.nether.net\/~jared\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}