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Sprint 'Betting Big On Trump,' Could Merge With T-Mobile Or Comcast (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Speculation that Sprint will merge with T-Mobile USA or another competitor has ramped up since the inauguration of President Donald Trump. That continued Friday when a report from The New York Times suggested that Sprint could be combined with either T-Mobile or Comcast, the nation's largest cable company. Masayoshi Son, founder and CEO of Sprint owner SoftBank, "and his financial advisers are weighing several major possible deals for Sprint," the Times wrote. "Be it a tie-up with T-Mobile U.S., Sprint's closest competitor, or a more ambitious marriage with the cable colossus Comcast, a transaction would allow Mr. Son to fulfill a long-held ambition to invest aggressively in wireless networks in the United States and enable next-generation mobile technology." Titled "The World's Top Tech Investor Is Betting Big on Trump," the Times report says that "the Trump administration's push for lighter regulation and lower taxes has been a powerful lure for cash-rich investors the world over." SoftBank, which is based in Japan, had several of its executives "spen[d] a day in Washington talking to senior members of Mr. Trump's economic team" last month, according to bankers who were briefed on the meetings, the Times report said. U.S. regulators opposed wireless consolidation during the Obama administration, preventing potential mergers between AT&T and T-Mobile and later between Sprint and T-Mobile. With four major nationwide carriers, U.S. wireless competition recently led to an expansion of unlimited data plans.
Soon, we will have fewer choices again.
Then at least nothing of value would be lost.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
In the (wrongly attributed) words of PT Barnum, "There's a leftist born every minute".
Meanwhile, a thousand Trump supporters run around proclaiming "Obama bugged Trump! We know so because Trump said so!"
I'm going to risk the inevitable downmod from the rabid hard right and alt-right types by finally thinking that we have maybe another six to nine months before even a majority of Republicans in Congress begin planning to remove this imbecile from office. I think there are at least decent odds that by this time next year we'll be bitching and moaning about President Pence.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
A German-Japanese alliance? Is it 1940 again?
What this country needs when it comes to cable and broadband providers is less competition and higher prices. Let's fall even further behind the rest of the industrialized world.
Every corporation should merge into one, that would be more efficient right? And I'm not suggesting state-run corporations, that would imply that you could still vote on who represents you. No, they would remain private, operated by a board that elects itself, be "too big to fail".
"the SoftBank executives said that because of a lack of advanced digital investments, the competitiveness of the United States economy was at risk."
ugh. I'm afraid that Trump might fall for lots of phony *national competitiveness* corporate pitches. I hope the Republicans block this stuff. Cisco made one on *digital infrastructure*.
By my understanding of mobile phone technology and protocols those are the two least compatible networks in the USA at the present time. All the customers of one would eventually be stuck buying phones running the protocol of the other. Wouldn't a Sprint / Verizon merger make a lot more sense from a technology standpoint?
Merging with Comcast might make some sense, but I don't recall hearing Comcast ever express a previous interest in going into the mobile market.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Obama wire-tapping Trump's phones has been documented as a fact in the New Your Times.
Please see the cover of the New York Times, January 20th, 2017.
The headline reads: “Wiretapped Data Used in Inquiry of Trump Aides.”
Details: http://lidblog.com/same-ny-tim...
You can of course point to where that piece of an article says "Obama wiretapped Trump's phone."
There's a specific claim being made and it isn't the one you seem to think it is.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Reading comprehension isn't one of the glorious Trump regimes strong points. Or any form of comprehension at all, really.
They seem awfully proficient at getting mod points, mind you.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Meanwhile, a thousand Trump supporters run around proclaiming "Obama bugged Trump! We know so because Trump said so!"
I'm going to risk the inevitable downmod from the rabid hard right and alt-right types by finally thinking that we have maybe another six to nine months before even a majority of Republicans in Congress begin planning to remove this imbecile from office. I think there are at least decent odds that by this time next year we'll be bitching and moaning about President Pence.
Yeah?
Explain to me how a US citizen's phone call was recorded then leaked? Yeah, it was with a Russian likely under surveillance, but HOW'D A LIKELY OBAMA SUPPORTER OUTSIDE OF FISA CHANNELS GET ACCESS TO THAT? AND THEN LEAK IT?
So, we already have DEMONSTRABLE PROOF of Obama supporters illegally using intelligence-derived information against Trump.
Ah, jumping to conclusions you are... I don't know if Trump has any evidence of this wiretapping he's tweeting about or not, but I can see no reason for him to be making stuff up like this. What's the upside if he's knowingly making this up? I suspect he's got at least SOME evidence (real or perceived) and he's not making this up out of whole cloth.
Now, I ask you, before you go off and act like there is nothing here, that he's just a nut case who makes stuff up... Is that the Trump you know and already hate? Can a successful business man do this and survive? I don't think so, so you'd be wise to take it easy and wait before jumping to conclusions because Trump IS prone to making big claims on limited evidence and tying his opponents up in knots of their own making. It's a game he's good at, playing his opponents for fools and getting them to dress up in clown outfits of their own making.
Personally, I suspect the democrats are being played, just like Trump is playing the press. Making both look like idiots running around claiming the sky is falling over and over. It's like he's playing with a cat using a laser pointer and you guys are acting like he's getting ready to shoot with a laser sight...
Trump is in charge of the WH Twitter feed.
In other words you can provide no actual evidence to support his claims. As it is the whole thing appears to be a right wing shock jock's conspiracy theory.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Writing unevidenced claims in bold capitals doesn't make them true.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Do you use the same standard of evidence for your news sources (ex. CNN and NYT) or is thin air typically enough?
Yes. There were transcripts of Flynn talking to the Russian ambassador, so there were wiretaps done on foreign communications. Nobody is questioning whether or not some monitoring of Trump campaign officials was happening.
Nowhere does that say Obama ordered it. Nowhere does it say it was Trump himself that was monitored. It was part of an investigation and done based on evidence with court approval, not some fiat declaration from the dictator-in-chief, which is apparently what Trump supporters think the president is.
The presidency is not a monarchical position. The POTUS does not have king-like powers. One of the things he cannot do, since the Nixon administration, is order a wiretap. Only a court can approve that (including the FISA secret court) and only after an active investigation provides enough evidence to get a warrant.
Get that? Do you have a tape of Obama ordering the tap? No? Then you have nothing. Nor does Trump, by the looks of it.
That's why Comey is out there asking for the Justice Department to repudiate Trump's claim, because it's a bigger lie about the way our formerly stable republic works than it is about Obama. Trump isn't undermining Obama, he's undermining his own government. He is acting like a fifth-columnist, hopefully not wittingly.
Slashdot is one of the alt-rights targetted "liberal safe spaces" presumably because of prior history of being nerds and other intellectual types (it doesn't have to be an accurate reason)
The Trump regime is leaking like a sieve, probably due to a combination of poor management skills, inexperience and a genuine loathing of the man by existing staff members. It's no surprise he's gone full tinfoil hat and started blaming the Obama boogieman for everything that's gone wrong in such a short time, he's had an unhealthy obsession with Obama for many years now.
Mark Levin is a right wing shock jock now? Something along the lines of Howard Stern or John Stewart? Now that is a funny joke... I've had the chance to read a couple of Mark Levin's books, they are extremely well researched and scholarly. I trust his assumptions are more than most folks facts.
I don't know if Trump has any evidence of this wiretapping he's tweeting about or not, but I can see no reason for him to be making stuff up like this.
I can : HE'S BATSHIT CRAZY ! Even the republicans know this full well, those who have a brain anyway. Can't you even see that the republican party is in full damage control mode ever since the election, trying to control the outbursts of this mad man ?
For fuck's sake, have you and all the other fucking trumpists spent ANY time on Planet Earth in the past 30 years or so ? The man is a text book example of every single personnality disorder listed in the DSM V !!
Congratulations, fucking trumpist fucktards. You've elected a mad man as the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. And the republicans hate you for it even more than the democrats do !
In general, I don't accept someone simply saying "I was wiretapped" and the primary defense of that being his own staff saying "Oh fur shure, he's got like evidence you don't know..."
As it stands, it's pretty clear a whole lot of people in Congress are as mystified by this as everyone else. But it served its purpose. It got everyone to stop talking about yet another senior member of the Administration being outed lying about contact with the Russians.
As to the standards put forward by CNN, whenever it amounts to "inside sources", I don't usually give the story THAT much credibility. But as we saw with Flynn, it wasn't very long before "that's a total bullshit story that's all lies!" turned into Flynn quitting/being fired.
What I'm seeing here is the Trump Administration rather awkwardly trying to pivot some fairly well known information about the FBI looking into Russian interference into "Obama wiretapped Trump!" as a form of misdirection about the fact that his AG has been outed lying to the Senate confirmation hearing. And that for me is a puzzler. Why did Flynn lie to Pence and why did Sessions lie to Franken? After all, neither man, on the fact of it did anything wrong. But at any rate, the reasons may never be known, but that doesn't mean that they didn't get caught lying, nor is it justification for Trump loudly proclaiming, without providing any evidence, that the previous POTUS ordered his phone to be tapped (which would appear to be a pretty huge distortion of what happened largely based on some right wing conspiracy theory shock jock's bizarre claims).
To me that's the most trouble part of most of Trump's activities. He seems to react to things he sees on the fucking television. He has probably the most effective espionage apparatus the world has ever known at his fingertips, and CNN, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Breitbarts and some right wing conspiracy poo flinger named Mark Levin. You can tell by the awkward interviews with Trump's own PR people that not even they know what the fuck he's talking about.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Isn't this kind of risky from a business perspective?
Trumps administration is weakening lots of rules yes, so they could squeeze in mergers other administrations wouldn't allow, but the FCC's power is bureaucratic. It'll still be there after the next election, and have the power to impose regulation on a new super entity in a market they are likely to not enjoy. And unlikely though it may be, even force the break up again like with bell.
Normally I'd say such an outcome as breaking the company back up would be nearly impossible but trump got elected, so backlash over having somebody so extreme in power will probably lead to a hard core Democrat next time.
The problem is that if he's in total meltdown now, just 45 days into his Presidency, what is Trump going to be like in 180 days or 365 days? No wonder Republicans are trying to get an Obamacare replacement out ASAP. How much longer can they keep up the facade of good will before they finally have to accept they're dealing with a fantasist?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
So well researched that not even he can actually provide any evidence that President Obama ordered Trump Tower wiretapped. There's nothing well-researched about this. It's just out and out conspiracy theory, and Trump has jumped on it because he is, in his awkward way trying to take control of the 24 hour news cycle from the ill attention Sessions was getting. That's certainly been successful, to an extent, except of course the claim of wiretapping is going to end up in the same hands as the claims of Russian and Trump campaign team communications. It's a bit of hyperbole that maybe, just maybe, buys him some time, but if all he has is Levin and Breitbart's fantastical tales of the evil Obama Administration, sooner or later, Sessions' problems are going to resurface.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The only statements of fact in the Times article are "Mr. Son and his financial advisers are weighing several major possible deals for Sprint" and "The [Softbank executive discussions with Trump's economic team] were purposely broad in nature". Everything else is someone speculating on what might happen and people commenting on said speculation.
Can we save our outrage for when someone proposes something concrete?
> I'm going to risk the inevitable downmod from the rabid hard right and alt-right types by finally thinking that we have maybe another six to nine months before even a majority of Republicans in Congress begin planning to remove this imbecile from office.
Ah, pause your actions, all! Heed and record the March prediction from MightyMartian!
We'll add this to the February prediction of "I honestly think Bannon's days are numbered", the January prediction of "Congress is going to start moving to claw back the Presidency's legislatively enabled executive powers", the December prediction of " a man of Trump's age is unlikely to be seeking a second term" (he registered for 2020 on the evening of inauguration day, so he is, unprecedentedly, the only declared 2020 candidate), and of course the November prediction that "I am so going to enjoy rubbing it into Trump supporter's faces on Wednesday.".
Trump is the US Commander Liar in Chief (CLIC).
He's getting pummeled (correctly) for playing footsie with the Russians. So he yells "Squirrel!" and everyone looks.
This is a blatant ploy to divert attention away from his Russian problems. He's lying and anyone who plays along with this ploy is stupid, is in on the diversion, or, well, that about covers it.
Do you know what baselessly accusing someone of something is called? Slander or libel. That's what Trump is committing. Slander or libel. Slander is spoken fraud and libel is written fraud. Take your pick.
I don't know if Trump has any evidence of this wiretapping he's tweeting about or not, but I can see no reason for him to be making stuff up like this. What's the upside if he's knowingly making this up?
Why not, his record on telling the truth is not stellar. His lying is so prolific even his staff feel free to lie without consequence.
Well at least my stalker has an actual account.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Wow, Obama directly acted a FISA court to bug Trump.
And you have evidence for this, right?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The problem boils down to the fact that Trump's proxies spent a good deal of last year cozying up to the Russians. They can spread conspiracy theories about President Obama ordering Trump be bugged (which is factually wrong, the President doesn't have that power, but whatever), but the real problem is that Trump's close advisers and appointees have created a veritable nest of Russian connection problems, and now the chickens are coming home to roost. Did the likes of Flynn and Sessions imagine that they weren't going to get caught.
That's the real bizarre part, that people like Flynn and Sessions clearly weren't being very covert at all, that they were lying about their contacts with Russia that have been trivially easy to find. Even if nothing they did ultimately was illegal, the fact that they lied about it makes what may very well be non-events, or at least fairly unremarkable contacts, into scandals. As with Sessions, as with Flynn, the probably may not be that they chatted with Putin's representatives, it's that they seemed to have such a guilty conscience about it that they felt the need to lie; Flynn to Pence, and Sessions, far worse, to US Senators in his confirmation hearing. If Flynn had to go, how much longer has Sessions got?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Sprint is rubbish in my opinion, which makes them a perfect fit for Comcast. I'll do business with neither, although I welcome either changing my mind by proving they can deliver a good quality, competitive service.
My hunch is that the leaks in the White House aren't meant to be attacks on Trump himself, but rather various factions in what appears to be a very competitive White House environment trying to take the piss out of each other.
In the past, when "White House sources" leaked something, that was shorthand for "the President wants the public to know this, but doesn't want anyone going on record", in other words, it was a targeted form information/mis-information dissemination.
But the Trump White House doesn't function like that. It appears that Trump, perhaps quite intentionally, has created a White House built out of various competing factions, all trying to curry his favor and show their the best and most loyal. That's why they all seem to have their knives out for Priebus, because, as Chief of Staff, he's nominally supposed to be in charge of access to the President and general administration of the White House staff itself. But in this kind of environment, the CoS's primary job as gatekeeper would inevitably mean he's viewed as an obstruction, and what's more, with a dizzying array of "chief advisers" with Jared Kushner and Ivanka on one side and Steve Bannon on the other, Priebus seems to be viewed in equal parts with contempt and jealousy, and likely has no real control at all. The long and the short of it is that Trump's White House is a badly malfunctioning one with no clear lines of authority and where people seem to be using the press as a means of plunging knives into each others' backs, and in the process they're damaging the credibility of the Administration.
And that's all before Trump picks up his cell phone and begins tweeting...
Meanwhile, I'm reading these articles about what a steadying hand Mike Pence is (which makes us wonder how chaotic the White House would be if he wasn't there), how he's formed his own effective team and seems to generally be maintaining an air of calm orderly competence. Which makes me wonder if Pence is positioning himself in such a way as to a Trump loyalist, while sending coding signals to Congress that amount to "I'll back the President all the way, but if you do decide that he's too fucking batshit insane to be President anymore, well, I'm ready to go..."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Of course he doesn't. The latest news out of the Trump camp, after the wiretap misdirection was shot down, is now "well actually it wasn't a wiretap, we don't know what it was, but it was something". If you've ever had any experience of having a child lie to you, you'll recognise this shifting of position immediately.
So now the Senate is going to be charged with investigating "somehow, sometime, somewhere the Obama Administration did something to Donald Trump"?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The irony of course being that Trump accused Obama of McCarthyism.
Uh oh looks like the Trump downmod brigade is coming through! Let's make sure this is a trigger-free zone, people!
The talk of Comcast makes a lot of sense to me. The writing is on the wall for wired home services--it's just a matter of time before the cell companies decide to push hard into that market. For most consumers, they could swap out their cable boxes and cable modem for versions that use LTE instead of coax. It would just be a matter of the cell companies having sufficient bandwidth.
Certainly Comcast sees this coming. Buying Sprint would be their best move to stay relevant as the market shifts. Instead of sitting around while the cell companies eat into their market, they can use Sprint to eat into the markets of their competitors.
Now I would much rather see Alphabet (Google) buy Sprint. That could enhance the competitive marketplace for home Internet and video instead of constrict it.
Radio Shack Sprint Mobile
Someone quite awhile ago pointed out The Doctor's statement that the powerful and the stupid both make up their own facts. They also didn't put two and two together and realize that The Doctor is powerful. Kind of like how Christians most often don't put two and two together about Jesus's three days dead and his marvelling about the poor woman's two small coins and how he is actually like the rich people.
Why are all these big companies always in such a hurry to merge? Is it because the billionaires who own them are too lazy to see 2 stocks on their balance sheet and they just want to combine it to one? At this point, basically every stock is owned by the same 100k people anyway. Why don't they all just start a colony somewhere and leave us the hell alone?
It could be beneficial, in that 2 big players create a single standard for the use of wireless technology, meaning less fragmentation of services. When niche technology has been throw out, the government needs to step in and regulate it like infrastructure, forcing emergency services access/TTY/guaranteed connectivity/carrier-only laws onto the corporate behemoth. That requires the current Republican government to frown on defrauding the customer and on forced bundling of services. Their recent record for demanding honesty and performance from their corporate overlords, isn't good.
It hasn't been caught doing any such thing, and even Trump's mouthpieces know it which is why they're diluting the claims.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
So, Team of Rivals? Postively Lincolnian.
Thanks for pointing out how historically great Trump is!
The Obama administration has been caught red-handed wire-tapping in a way that Nixon could only have dreamed about. You can redefine the argument all you want.
Sorry, you must not have got the memo from your Truppfuhrer. The alt-right lie has shifted now, it's you who are meant to be redefining the argument: you're supposed to be claiming it was *not* wiretapping, you should be saying it was "something else", but you don't know what. Or how. That's the problem with lies, if you don't keep up you'll trip over yourself. But by all means, keep contradicting your own party line and repeating something that has been shown to be false. It just helps demonstrate how you conmen operate.
Meanwhile the charges of Jeff Sessions lying to Congress over communication with the Russians are completely 100% true, the act was caught on tape and has been televised all over the world. Pathetic lies and misdirection don't alter this fact.
we have maybe another six to nine months before even a majority of Republicans in Congress begin planning to remove this imbecile from office
Not until after the midterms. The problem with the last election is that it was so surprising - if he had been expected to win, if poles had shown themselves to accurately represent what voters were thinking, then public opinion turning against him would be enough to sway legislators. As it is, Republican legislators don't know what they should think or what they say. They don't know how their constituents will react, so I'm expecting them to avoid rocking the boat until the midterms.
If the midterms go to the Democrats, then the Republicans will turn against Trump.
Of course, the irony that Leftists don't understand is that the mainstream media are being called out for the Leftist shills that they are. First, there is a wiretap documented in their own reporting in the New York Times. Then Trump tweets it and it's suddenly false. Then, all of a sudden, people are starting to say that there's no proof of the Trump-Russia connection. Where's the true story? And, did Obama break the law by-- directly or indirectly-- using intelligence gathered on an American citizen?
If Progressives had the mental capacity, their heads would be exploding. But, they don't. Convenient short-term memory, and blind obedience and adherence to propaganda, has created a bunch of robots who will never engage in intelligent discourse, let alone understand nuance.
Trump claiming Obama wiretapped his phone is not the same as a Russian phone line being wiretapped, and one of Trump's aides calling the phone line in question. Do you see the difference? The former is fantasy, the second standard operating procedure. That's why it's called fake - because it is demonstrably fake.
It doesn't make you or your argument look particularly sound if you attack the "mental capacity" of others with a news article you didn't understand. Ouch.
Couple that with Trump admitting (in 2013) on national TV that he has a relationship with Putin, and this starts to get a bit worrying. Conflicts of interest aplenty.
I especially liked how you didn't bother to provide any evidence of how your chosen "bad guys" are lying. That definitely makes you look balanced. Definitely.
I suspect this is the Republican game plan all along: use Trump's celebrity and free media pass to get the White House, then let him hoist himself on his own petard and Pence can take over.
Lie
Isn't that the truth?
Clinton was impeached for, and I quote the judge, giving SUBSTANTIALLY false statements which "reprehensible as they are do not rise to perjury"
IOKIYAR.
It's O.K., IF you are republican!
Well, that and Comey is finally aware that his October Surprise boomeranged on his precious agency.