The Wall Street Journal earlier this week reported Sprint is considering dumping it's Nextel unit. Sprint needs to do something, but dumping Nextel rings of re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. While the rumors and ideas float, Deutsch Telecom (owner of T-Mobile) is considering buying up Sprint even though they'll need to convert everything to GSM. If the price falls far enough, there will be plenty of cash left over.
But the knee-slapper comes when you look at the (short) list of potential Nextel buyers, and at the top of the list is Nextel's founder, Morgan O'Brien. Sprint buys Nextel for $35 Billion and might need to sell it for as little as $5 Billion. I'm sure Morgan is scrambling to come up the money as you read this. Sprint has other options with Nextel, but they certainly have proven they can't run the company and they need to do something before their stock drops completely out of sight.
We would hope there would be some kind of advantages on the horizon for current or potential Sprint users, but almost any idea now is too little too late. Virgin Mobile is making good use of the Sprint network, Sprint should be able to, also. But they won't until they cleanse themselves of past sins. As we said last year, Sprint needs to change their name to something really sexy, or at least really different. Could they try "Cingular?"
No comments:
Post a Comment