|
Get the ICT news from C114 delivered to your inbox everyday.
TOP 20 SEARCH TERMS CURRENTLY ON C114
4 Huawei 5 ZTE 6 Cisco 7 Ericsson 10 Nortel 11 TD-SCDMA 12 Nokia 13 Motorola 14 Samsung 15 Utstarcom 16 ASB 17 MediaTek 18 WiMmax 19 WCDMA 20 CDMA |
Deutsche Telekom Mulling Sprint Nextel Takeover
Updated:2008/5/4 11:08
Germany''s Deutsche Telekom is reported to be eying a possible takeover of the USA based Sprint Nextel. The German news magazine, Der Spiegel reported that a combined Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile would enable the firm to compete on a more equal footing with AT&T and Verizon Wireless.
"The Sprint project is top priority," the magazine said, although it said that no formal negotiations with Sprint Nextel had started yet. The magazine also noted that the falling dollar made the purchase easier for Deutsche Telekom to finance. Sprint''s shares are trading at $7.81 down from the $25 they reached less than two years ago. According to figures from the Mobile World, a merged company would have ended last year with a subscriber base of 82.4 million customers compared to AT&T (70.5 million) and Verizon Wireless (65.7 million). Sprint has been in trouble ever since it agreed to a merger with Nextel, which also resulted in substantial extra costs as various Sprint affiliates forced the company into buying them out. Sprint Nextel is valued at less than $1,000 per customer based on a study of takeover scenarios by Merrill Lynch & Co. published in March. Any takeover or merger would be a regulatory nightmare though, as the US government would be unlikely to allow a takeover by a company which has a substantial shareholding by the German government - whilst a merger would result in Deutsche Telekom becoming majority owned by US shareholders. The German government in turn may not approve of that result. Equally, it should be noted that you would end up with a company which runs three networks using different air interface technologies. Whilst cost savings could be driven from merging their respective backhaul and sharing tower infrastructure, it is unlikely that the savings would make for a compelling argument for a merger. A possible proposal to spin off the iDEN based Nextel network and retain the CDMA and GSM networks would not only make integrating their platforms a lot easier - it would probably please a lot of disgruntled iDEN subscribers who have been ditching the network since Sprint took over. Source: Der Spiegel |
Latest News
，GPON Still Set Fair, Despite Delays ，Nortel's Situation Dire, Faced with Huawei, ZTE and Global Giants ，Japan's DoCoMo eyes 'Google phone' launch next year ，Open standards create more opportunities to deploy IPTV ，China Mobile to Deploy National FTTx Network in 2009 ，Virgin's In-flight Wi-Fi Coming Monday ，LTE can't come soon enough for China Mobile ，Telecom Investment to Soar upon 3G Licenses ，Chip maker Lam Research cuts 600 jobs Hot News Review
，Ericsson Gets 5% Of China Mobile Deal, Expected 10% ，3G China - A Personal Mobile Experience for All? ，Cisco's Emerging-Markets Gambit ，China Telecom and Microsoft sign cooperation agreement ，86% Of TD-SCDMA Testers Unwilling To Buy In ，MIIT Suggests 3G Licensing before Year-end ，New China Unicom Handset Subsidiary: Development Status ，China Unicom Projects 3G Licensing to Accelerate ，China Mobile trialing FTTx, national roll out mooted for 2009 ，TD-SCDMA Forum Joined by a Prestigious New Member |
