Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Sprint In Talks with LightSquared and Deutsche Telekom

Sprint logoBloomberg is reporting that Sprint and Deutsche Telekom are currently in talks for the possible purchase of T-Mobile USA by the American carrier, with DT owning up to 50% of the newly merged entity. Failing such a purchase, DT is also exploring other options such as purchasing additional spectrum from Clearwire for its long planned 4G network or other sales strategies.

The one issue stalling a purchase of T-Mobile USA by Sprint according to the report is the difference of opinion in just how much T-Mobile USA is actually worth, since their latest Q4 financial reports indicate that T-Mobile lost 56,000 customers while Sprint gained customers for the first time in four years.

In related news, Sprint is also in talks with mobile network startup LightSquared concerning its satellite-terrestrial hybrid 4G LTE network, with LightSquared seeking to lease Sprint’s network infrastructure to build out its planned network, while Sprint is undergoing its own network infrastructure transition in the Network Vision network consolidation initiative, which plans to roll out multi-mode base stations that can handle CDMA, WiMAX and LTE while slowly sunsetting iDEN by 2013 and making another attempt to move push to talk to CDMA.

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