Hasta La Gadget!

It appears that Dish wasn’t the only one who wants the FCC to put the brakes on Softbank’s merger with Sprint. Bloomberg reports that the US Justice Department has just requested that the FCC delay the deal as well. No word on why governmental lawyers are making the request, but we’ll update this post as soon as more information is available.

Update: While the DOJ has recommended that the FCC delay its approval of the deal due to national security concerns, it turns out that Dish has decided not to stand against the merger, after all. So, Sprint and Softbank have exchanged a private sector problem for a governmental one. The DOJ’s scrutiny certainly provides a significant hurdle for the deal to clear, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the two telcos can never be together. We’ll have to wait and see whether Uncle Sam gives the merger its final stamp of approval.

Update 2: Sprint has issued a statement on the matter: ‘This is a routine request when working with the CFIUS agencies regarding national security.” So, it seems that the folks in Overland Park aren’t overly concerned with the DOJ’s snooping.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Sprint

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Via: The Verge, Bloomberg (Twitter), Bloomberg

Source: FCC

This week the folks at Dish Network have made it clear that they’re going to go hardcore with their business tactics when it comes to attaining Clearwire – their methods including hitting the competition where it hurts: Sprint’s merger with Softbank. Several months ago Softbank made a bid to attain US-based Sprint while Sprint made a bid to attain Clearwire, their ability to purchase Clearwire being based on they themselves being purchased by Softbank. Because Dish Network sees Softbank’s acquisition of Sprint as contingent on Sprint’s future purchase of Clearwire, they’ve filed for the whole stack of cards to come tumbling down.

A regulatory filing has been filed this week by Dish Network that they hope will ultimately leave Sprint on its own without the cash to purchase Clearwire, leaving them able to do so themselves. The following fact list should make this situation rather clear to you – or to the FCC – or both! Have a peek at how this is all about to go down – these are in chronological order, mind you:

1. Sprint owns 50% of Clearwire (and has since before these dealings started last year).

2. Softbank enters into agreement to purchase Sprint (a controlling interest, that is, 70% of the company) for $20.1bn USD. This deal remains under consideration by the FCC to this day.

3. Sprint offers Clearwire $2.90 USD a share for all remaining shares ($2.1bn USD contingent on Softbank deal going through)

4. Softbank limits Sprint’s bid on Clearwire to $2.97 a share ($2.2bn total) and Clearwire accepts. (December 14th, 2012) NOTE: Bloomberg reports here now on January 17th, 2013, that the following is true: “While it has made no decision to reconsider Sprint’s offer, Clearwire said it plans to talk to Dish, which is led by Chairman Charlie Ergen, and will keep its options open by not drawing on financing offered by Sprint.”

5. According to CNET, Dish Network makes an unsolicited bid of $3.30 USD a share for the stocks they’ve just agreed to sell to Sprint, (this being the same 50% of Clearwire not yet owned by Sprint), this totaling $5.15bn USD. Clearwire states that it is “severely limited by its current contractual obligations.” (January 8th, 2013)

6. Dish initiates regulatory filing with FCC that you can access at the FCC right now with a big fat “REQUEST TO HOLD PROCEEDING IN ABEYANCE” neat the head:

“DISH Network L.L.C. (“DISH”) requests that the above-captioned proceeding, for which petitions to deny are currently due January 28, 2013, be held in abeyance, and that the “shot clock” in this proceeding be paused, until the resolution of significant unresolved contingencies concerning Sprint Nextel Corporation’s (“Sprint”) offer to acquire all of Clearwire Corporation (“Clearwire”). In this proceeding, Sprint seeks not only the authority to be acquired by SoftBank Corporation (“SoftBank”); it also requests authority to acquire the stock of Clearwire that it does not already own, as well as de facto control over Clearwire.

But Sprint’s acquisition of control over Clearwire is subject to, among other things, a vote of the non-Sprint shareholders in the face of a higher value offer made by DISH and Clearwire’s response to DISH’s offer. These contingencies make SoftBank’s and Sprint’s applications unripe for consideration.” – Dish Network

They add the following – and a whole lot more that you can read on your own if you wish – including reference to “the Eagle River purchase.” Eagle River is the group from which whoever ends up purchasing the remaining shares of Clearwire will be buying them from, clean and simple. Also included is a reference to “Crest”, this being Crest Financial, a minority stakeholder in Clearwire and one of two groups seeking the FCC’s reconsideration in approving Sprint’s purchase of the remaining stocks in Clearwire (the other being Dish). This is Dish Network’s case:

“Moreover, whether the Eagle River purchase gave Sprint de facto control (as Crest alleges) or not (as Clearwire does), there is no doubt that it facilitates the acceptance of Sprint’s offer to buy the rest of Clearwire. First things first: the Commission should evaluate the propriety of the cursory treatment received by the Eagle River purchase before it takes up the larger SoftBank-Sprint transaction. ” – Dish Network

So it’s a good time had by all! It would seem that if Dish Network is successful detaching Softbank’s deal with Sprint to pick up Clearwire, the remaining stocks would probably be delivered to Dish with a bow. It all depends on the FCC though, of course, and we’ll be watching this deal closely as it continues to unfold through the Spring of 2013.

Bonus! AT&T carefully objected to the Softbank/Sprint acquisition two days after it was announced, well before the Clearwire dealings, too!

[via CNET]

Dish demands FCC see Softbank-Sprint deal “unripe for consideration” is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Despite how some might feel about Apple’s iPhone, it’s still a pretty hot product and having it on your network would most certainly give customers a reason to sign up with you. Apparently that has been the case over in the Japan as Japanese carrier, NTT DoCoMo, has blamed the iPhone for the loss of some of its customers, whereby they have reportedly lost about 40,800 subscribers to its network in November to their rivals, KDDI and Softbank, both of whom currently offer Apple’s iPhone 5 in their portfolio. It seems that during the same period, both KDDI and Softbank have seen an increase in subscribers by 228,800 and 301,900 respectively. This is probably why we’re sure that T-Mobile is pretty pleased with themselves for finally having signed an agreement with Apple in which they will begin to offer Apple products come 2013. It is unclear at this point exactly what that agreement entails, but it’s safe to assume that iPhones and iPads might be involved. Perhaps sometimes down the road NTT DoCoMo will be able to hop on board the iOS bandwagon, but for now Softbank and KDDI appear to have the upperhand.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: The TurtleJacket PentaEye is an iPhone case for the “serious iPhoneographers”, Anostyle will let you customize your iPhone 5 with different colors,

As some you guys might have heard, Japan’s Softbank announced not too long about that they would be purchasing a majority stake in Sprint, or better known by their legal name, Sprint Nextel. While we’re still unclear as to what sort of changes Softbank will be bringing about to one of the major carriers in the US and what this could ultimately mean for current Sprint customers, what we do know is that in a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission by Sprint, it looks like the company will be officially dropping the “Nextel” portion from its legal name, and will be legally known as Sprint Corporation. This probably doesn’t really change anything since most people refer to the carrier as Sprint to begin with. It was also revealed that Sprint does not expect to cut any jobs when the transaction takes place, which we guess is good news for current employees. The deal is expected to conclude in 2013 assuming no resistance is met and approvals have been given.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Softbank not ruling out possible Sprint bid on MetroPCS, AT&T releases statement regarding Softbank-Sprint deal,

With Softbank announcing that they will be purchasing a majority stake in Sprint, naturally many assumed that Sprint’s ambition to outbid T-Mobile on the MetroPCS deal would go away. As it turns out that isn’t the case and according to the Wall Street Journal, both Softbank and Sprint’s CEOs have come forward with statements saying that the possibility of bidding for MetroPCS could still be in the cards. Apparently this is thanks to the nature of the deal between Softbank and Sprint, in which Softbank will be giving Sprint some cash to work with if the opportunity to bid for MetroPCS is available.

According to Dan Hesse, Sprint’s CEO, “Think of it almost as an insurance policy. It’s some money in the bank until the deal closes that, for some reason, if we wanted to do something we could.” Hesse also spoke about assumptions that Sprint and T-Mobile could merge in the future to take on AT&T and Verizon – “We’ve got a transaction that’s pending with Softbank, and then when we get together we’ll take a look at the landscape and make our decisions then. If it’s accretive and makes sense for our shareholders, I would do what it takes.” In any case it looks like major changes will be taking place amongst the major US carriers and it will be interesting to see how this will impact and benefit consumers in the future.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: AT&T releases statement regarding Softbank-Sprint deal, Softbank to purchase 70% stake in Sprint for $20 billion,