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Sprint, T-Mobile Aiming To Reach Merger Deal Next Week (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: U.S. wireless carriers T-Mobile and Sprint have made progress in negotiating merger terms and are aiming to successfully complete deal talks as early as next week. The combined company would have more than 127 million customers and could create more formidable competition for the No.1 and No.2 wireless players, Verizon and AT&T, amid a race to expand offerings in 5G, the next generation of wireless technology. T-Mobile majority-owner Deutsche Telekom and Japan's SoftBank, which controls Sprint, are considering an agreement that would dictate how they exercise voting control over the combined company. This could allow Deutsche Telekom to consolidate the combined company on its books, even without owning a majority stake. Deutsche Telekom owns more than 63 percent of T-Mobile, while SoftBank owns 84.7 percent of Sprint. Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile are also in the process of finalizing the debt financing package they will use to fund the deal, the sources said. There is no certainty that a deal will be reached, the sources cautioned.
Iâ(TM)m with T-Mobile and Iâ(TM)ll do anything I can to avoid Sprint like the plague. Everything they do is garbage, from customer service to hidden fees.
This could allow Deutsche Telekom to consolidate the combined company on its books...
Does that mean that the new joined company will keep T-Mobile's management?
Because I'll tell you what, I'm a T-Mobile customer, and I'm pretty happy. The coverage may not be quite as good as Verizon, but there are no hidden fees, no mysterious extra charges, no vague limitations. They don't really do market segmentation with deceptive pricing. They don't try to fight me if I just want to buy an unlocked phone, forgo their subsidy, and have a lower monthly price. The terms of their international roaming are pretty awesome. In the US, they pretty much set the standard for what a cell carrier should be.
Meanwhile, Sprint has been a disaster for years. Even setting aside all the public well-known stuff, I used to have a job that involved dealing with all the major carriers, and Sprint was the worst. They were disorganized. The people who worked there were awful. Their internal systems were poorly designed. That was several years ago, and maybe it got better, but I have no faith in that company.
So if the deal is that T-Mobile gets Sprint's infrastructure to add on to their own, to improve coverage, cool. Great. But if people from Sprint are going to be running anything, then this is very sad news.
I've lost count... how many times has T-Mobile tried to merge with another carrier? And so far, hasn't each and every attempt been rebuffed by antitrust concerns?
Why are we hearing about this, yet again?
"he managed to end the Korean war today."
Did he? Or is the North Korea dictatorship just buying themselves more time and nothing is actually going to improve. But I won't be cynical here. If Trump can pull this off, he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. In fact I'll take that as a step forward, and say that any president that just doesn't go to war deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
"Unemployment at historic lows."
That was Obama's economy not Trump's. And even still it's dangerous to put too much faith in unemployment numbers. Those can change on a dime real fast.
"ISIS defeated."
And what exactly did Trump do to that effect? Nothing. They collapsed because their economic growth was unsustainable.
"Syria likely to not use chemical weapons on their people again."
Yes they will. And then we'll bomb a few buildings again. Rinse and repeat.
"Tax cuts for middle class."
But those are unsustainable. The lot itself requires your taxes to go up dramatically to pay for the debt.
Keep drinking the Kool aid.
Trump had nothing to do with it, and there's still no peace treaty signed. The two Koreas agreed that they should end the war and pledged to work toward it, but that's happened before and they're a long way from an actual treaty.
No, it's at 17-year lows. In 2000, the unemployment rate reached a record low of 3.8% in April, and had a four-month run of 3.9% from September to December.
Unemployment rates for blacks and Latinos are at record lows, but even then only by a tenth of a percent. For blacks, December 2017 has a 6.8% rate and February and March 2018 saw rates of 6.9% each. Compare to April 2000 when it was 7.0%. For Latinos, the record low of 4.8% was first achieved in October 2006 and duplicated in June, October, and November 2017.
Egypt, Syria, and Iraq would likely disagree. Egypt is dealing with ISIS in the Sinai Peninsula, Syria is still dealing with remnants, and Iraq is back to fighting them after some of the groups that fled Raqqa tried to take territory in Iraq again. Groups following or inspired by ISIS are still operating in Afghanistan, Libya, Nigeria, and the Philippines, and may be active in Pakistan, Chad, and Tunisia as well.
They said that after the first time he used cruise missiles after a chemical weapons attack, and that one actually did damage to real infrastructure and destroyed some aircraft. Many more chemical attacks happened.
Most people are only taking home a few extra dollars per week, and while a few companies have handed out raises and bonuses, they are by far the exception. Some of the bonuses, like those handed out by AT&T, were planned long before the tax cut was passed but played up as being made possible by it. Those bonuses totaled $200 million for 200,000 employees. Compare that to the $29.5 billion in profit it posted in 2017. They were crowing about sending 0.7% of their profits to the employees. Meanwhile, compensation for the top five executives in 2017 was more than $74 million.
The results so far are paper thin. It wouldn't take much to knock them down. Trump can do that by pushing a trade war, something he seems intent on doing. Even withdrawing from the Iran nuclear treaty could start stacking the deck against the economy given the significant sales that companies like Boeing have lined up with Tehran.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.