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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.
I'm sure The New York Times and The Washington Post is sitting on more stories WITH NO EVIDENCE that purport to tie Trump to Russia.
OMFG IT'S RUSSIA!!!!!!
Laugh as the progtards fall for it. The same progtards that 4 months ago thought Obama's "reset" with Russia worked and Russia wasn't hostile. But now those progtards are amped up on Reagan's "Evil Empire" characterization. Oh, the irony.
Then at least nothing of value would be lost.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
I always thought the pledge of allegiance could use updating. Here's the new ending:
One service provider
Under Trump
Indivisible
With surcharges and throttling for all
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.
Trump is in charge of the WH Twitter feed.
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 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?
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.
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.
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.
So, Team of Rivals? Postively Lincolnian.
Thanks for pointing out how historically great Trump is!