Slashdot Mirror
SoftBank Is Willing To Cede Control of Sprint To Get T-Mobile Merger Done, Says Report (phonedog.com)
According to Reuters, SoftBank is willing to cede control of Sprint to make a T-Mobile-Sprint merger happen. The company controls 83 percent of Sprint, but it'd reportedly be willing to surrender control of Sprint and retain a minority stake in a merger with T-Mobile. PhoneDog reports: It's said that SoftBank is growing frustrated with Sprint's lack of major growth in the U.S. market, and so it wants to merge with T-Mobile in order to better compete with Verizon and ATT. No talks between SoftBank and Deutsche Telekom are currently happening because of the FCC's 600MHz spectrum auction that prevents collusion between competing companies. Once the auction ends in April, though, it's expected that SoftBank will approached Deutsche Telekom about a deal.
"SoftBank is growing frustrated with Sprint's lack of major growth in the U.S. market"
What is wrong is a stable successful profitable company? It seems that everyone thinks that a company that isn't growing every year is not a good company. There's plenty of wealth and resources on this planet for everyone. The end goal is not to have one winner who owns everything.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
No, it comes down to why T-Mobile would freaking want Sprint and the baggage Sprint brings.
Sprint doesn't attract customers because, aside from bandwidth, they haven't been able to beat T-Mobile on anything enough for people to move to them. People generally with T-Mobile are actually happy with T-Mobile; they put up with the lack of bandwidth because T-Mobile is perceived as a better customer service and having better plans and policies company.
And T-Mobile needs to be careful. Sure, they'll get Sprint's customer base. But the whole softbank-Masa-Trump, right or wrong, will turn people off, esp the sort of customers T-Mobile tends to attract, esp with their independent style marketing. I don't say this simply because most people think Trump is a douche. T-Mobile experienced this when they were going to merge with AT&T--a lot of T-Mobile's customers were from AT&T, and AT&T was hell to them (AT&T is reportedly much improved since those times), and they bled customers simply on the announcement of the (later cancelled) merger. It doesn't help T-Mobile to absorb Sprint's customer base only to lose many of their own customers because the customers see the company going the wrong way. T-Mobile customers are known to want to be part of a "good" company and culture, something T-Mobile is perceived to have built the right way.
Even Masa by himself, having a sizeable minority stake, is dangerous. Anytime you have a known bigger businessman waiting in the wings with himself or a handpicked replacement ready to influence or internally strike, it's a bad setup. Besides the influence, he's got the capital to make an internal push once there's any hint of a slip up. (Think Apple vs. NeXT, Daimler vs. Chrysler, etc.)
If modern networks can share competing GSM derivate networks vs. Sprint's proprietary network, it'll bring T-Mobile some extra bandwidth and customers. But I just don't see why T-Mobile would bother with the baggage. There's too much risk of T-Mobile becoming more like Sprint than the other way around.
T-Mobile doesn't need to be contaminated with a wireless carrier STD, which is what Sprint is these days. Sure the booty may be cheap but you don't want it.
Taking some of Sprint's spectrum might be nice.
But T-Mobile seems to be doing well with the spectrum they have and the customers they have, and gain, every quarter. All T-Mobile has to do to be successful is stay on the path. Buying Sprint would take them off that path and put them on a new one where they have two networks to deal with and two probably very different customer bases and two sets of retail stores and all the other overlap. It is a huge risk to T-Mobile that this will derail their success and instead saddle them with Sprint's mess.
See what happened to Time Warner after it bought AOL. Two valued and successful companies now both worth a fraction of their prior values. They didn't sum. They subtracted.
Sig for hire.