Sprint Attempted Sale to Comcast, But Nobody's Buying The Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece exploring SoftBank's struggles since acquiring Sprint two years ago. The piece dubs Sprint a "chronic fixer upper" that has plagued SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son since acquisition, insiders telling the Journal that they didn't believe Son truly understood the logistics of U.S. tower upgrades, and assumed an acquisition of T-Mobile would be approved by regulators.

As such, Sprint now labors in fourth place among the big four carriers, and the company consistently promises an industry-leading network that seems perpetually around the corner. The piece interestingly notes that Son has been busy trying to sell Sprint to companies like Comcast, but nobody has been interested in buying the carrier: quote: Despite the pileup of problems, Mr. Son made a surprise appearance on Sprint’s quarterly earnings call last week to tell investors he remains committed to the “historical turnaround” at Sprint and doesn’t intend to sell it. He left out one telling detail: No one wanted to buy the struggling carrier. Within the past year, Mr. Son and another top SoftBank executive floated the idea of a sale to cable-television giant Comcast Corp. and European telecommunications company Altice SA, say people familiar with the matter. It went nowhere. Last week, Sprint reported a net loss of $20 while revenue fell 8.7% to $8.03 billion. The company continues to pour money into its network while trying to keep pace with T-Mobile's pricing and policy changes, and while there have been some Last week, Sprint reported a net loss of $20 while revenue fell 8.7% to $8.03 billion. The company continues to pour money into its network while trying to keep pace with T-Mobile's pricing and policy changes, and while there have been some modest improvements in network performance studies, the company remains in a notably precarious position.







News Jump Comcast Shuts Off Internet for Subs Who Were Sold Service Illegally; AT&T, Verizon Team To Stop T-Mobile 5G; + more news California Defends Its Net Neutrality Law; AT&T's Traffic Up 20% Despite Data Traffic Actually Being Down; + more news Are The Comcast-Charter X1 Talks Dead In The Water?; AT&T May Offer Phone Plans With Ads For Discounts; + more news Europe's Top Court: Net Neutrality Rules Bar Zero Rating; ViacomCBS To Rebrand CBS All Access As Paramount+; + more news Verizon To Buy Reseller TracFone For $7B; 5G Not The Competitive Threat To Cable Many Thought It Would Be; + more news MS.Wants Records From AT&T On $300M Project; Google Fiber Outages In Austin, Houston, Other Texan Cities; + more news States With The Biggest Decreases In Speed; AT&T Hopes You'll Forget Its Fight Against Accurate Maps; + more news AT&T's CEO Has A Familiar $olution To US Broadband Woes; EarthLink Files Suit Against Charter; + more news 5G Doesn't Live Up To Hype, AT&T's 5G Slower Than Its 4G; Cord-Cutting Now In 37% of Broadband Households; + more news FCC Cited False Broadband Data Despite Warnings; ZTE, Huawei Replacement Cost Is $1.87B, But Only $1B Allocated; + more ---------------------- this week last week most discussed

Most recommended from 41 comments



cline3621

Mr. Yuk is MEAN Mr. Yuk is GREEN

Premium Member

join:2006-06-14

Clarksville, TN 15 recommendations cline3621 Premium Member Sprint - Wasting Money I can only wonder where Sprint would be, if they hadn't purchased, then screwed over Nextel. Shortly after the Nextel acquisition, Sprint got the brilliant thinking of sponsoring NASCAR, for somewhere in the neighborhood of $7 billion, since 2004. I suppose they are learning, as they will no longer be sponsoring NASCAR after 2016.



Seriously? They paid over $7 billion to put their name on NASCAR? I don't get it.



Why pay for sponsorship of a 'sport' as an advertisement? (and I use the term 'sport' loosely as the driver is essentially dead weight, and could be replaced with a remote control, giving a racing team an advantage, and making it safer, but I digress)



If Sprint were to use the $7 billion making their product work better, ie, expanding coverage areas, network upgrades, and so on, they wouldn't need to sponsor anything as customers would advertise for them for free by word of mouth.



On a side note:

I don't understand why ANY company pays an exorbitant amount of money to sponsor sports leagues, stadiums, arenas, et al.



Recently, Titan's Stadium in Nashville, went through another name change. It was built as the Adelphia Coliseum. That was stupid for those people to pay to put their name on the stadium as Comcast is the local cable provider in Nashville. Then Adelphia's stupidity and corruption ended their business.

Next, LP building products, (Louisiana-Pacific) decided to pay $30 million to name the stadium, over a 10 year period. That was supposed to be from 2006-2016. It was called LP Field at that point. They decided to end ties with the city 1 year early to save money. In February of this year Nissan decided to pay $50 million for naming rights to the stadium for the next 20 years. So now it's Nissan Stadium.



Now I ask everyone here, has there ever been a time, where you have gone to any stadium, or arena, looked at ANY kind of advertisements, and thought, 'Ill buy that product?' Anyone? How many of us go out of our way, not to view ANY advertisements, in any medium, be it print, TV, radio, and internet? Sorry, I don't view or listen to any ads.



People don't buy Nissan trucks because they visited a football stadium.

People don't buy Bridgestone tires because they visited an NBA/NHL arena.

People don't buy Citigroup banking services because they visited a baseball field.



I don't buy any product based on advertisements.

Maybe I am the exception to the rule.

jbgroup1

Non Conformist

Premium Member

join:2000-05-04

Dayton, MD 14 recommendations jbgroup1 Premium Member That's about break even A US$20 net loss is about break even. Heck I'll give them US$21 and they'll make a profit.

Dryvlyne

Far Beyond Driven

Premium Member

join:2004-08-30

Newark, OH 6 recommendations Dryvlyne Premium Member Glad I ditched them when I did They honestly deserve this after years of over-promising and under-delivering. I remember when I had an unlimited plan with them but all they offered was horribly slow 3G service in my area which was even more horribly slow than the competition. I'm still not even sure if they offer LTE where I'm at, but I'm sure if they do it's the slowest of all the carriers. xrobertcmx

Premium Member

join:2001-06-18

White Plains, MD 3 recommendations xrobertcmx Premium Member Have considered them But they are just not priced competitively.

We pay T-Mo about $117 a month with tax. Sprint wanted a fair amount more.

graycorgi

Premium Member

join:2004-02-23 ·Comcast XFINITY

2 recommendations graycorgi Premium Member No one wanted T-Mobile either. DT spend years shopping it around and only AT&T was really interested.



I highly doubt the FTC will let T-Mobile or Sprint sell to eachother or to any company with a bad track record like Comcast. Comcast probably understands that their chance of being allowed to buy Sprint is basically zero. Everyone saw what happened when they were allowed to buy NBC Universal.

C0deZer0

Oc'D To Rhythm And Police

Premium Member

join:2001-10-03

Tempe, AZ 121.4 9.8

2 recommendations C0deZer0 Premium Member It has to be worth BUYING first, Sprint. You are not.



Sprint is already facing litigation from several jilted customers who they've attempted to rope in with promises to buy out their contracts and offering deals that claim to "cut your bill in half", only for the bill to show up usually more expensive than what they were paying for from the likes of Verizon Wireless or AT&T, both of which have invested in their networks considerably.



Sprint is also infamous among the carriers for refusing to comply with the federal unlock law. I myself have my own horror story, and at the end of it, they had the audacity to then demand the contact info of the person that gave me what was supposed to be an unlocked Sprint phone, and demand from them to tell me to never contact them again. And bringing up this dissatisfaction and they instead choose to block me from contacting them on Facebook instead of addressing any of these concerns.



Simply, if Sprint wants to put itself up for sale, it has to actually be worth buying for someone else to actually come and buy the company.



As it stands, right now is a terrible time to be a Sprint customer. They routinely sell intentionally defective and gimped phones that could be had from any other provider at full price. If you try to re-sell your phone, it being a Sprint phone automatically reduces its value by at least 33%, because it is no secret that they have the worst network of the major carriers. Their customer service staff, and their management routinely ignores or is pretty much on the border of dysfunctional, and constantly try to use the practice of having you contact them by phone, only to then insist that you call them from a non-sprint phone to actually do any troubleshooting, or better yet so they could promise you the moon, but deliver nothing. And following up with them usually getting them to try and punish you for actually holding them to their word!



Even if I had the capital to invest in purchasing a major wireless network, I wouldn't be dumb enough to even THINK of giving Sprint that kind of satisfaction, just like they refused to grant me any satisfaction as soon as they started messing with the network here. Sprint has not built into itself any intrinsic or residual value. Whatever positive points in its legacy have long since been destroyed at the hands of a cynical board that refuses to spend a dime on its network, and business practices that border on sleazy.Sprint is already facing litigation from several jilted customers who they've attempted to rope in with promises to buy out their contracts and offering deals that claim to "cut your bill in half", only for the bill to show up usually more expensive than what they were paying for from the likes of Verizon Wireless or AT&T, both of whichinvested in their networks considerably.Sprint is also infamous among the carriers for refusing to comply with the federal unlock law. I myself have my own horror story, and at the end of it, they had the audacity to then demand the contact info of the person that gave me what was supposed to be an unlocked Sprint phone, and demand from them to tell me to never contact them again. And bringing up this dissatisfaction and they instead choose to block me from contacting them on Facebook instead of addressing any of these concerns.Simply, if Sprint wants to put itself up for sale, it has to actually be worth buying for someone else to actually come and buy the company.As it stands, right now is a terrible time to be a Sprint customer. They routinely sell intentionally defective and gimped phones that could be had from any other provider at full price. If you try to re-sell your phone, it being a Sprint phone automatically reduces its value by at least 33%, because it is no secret that they have the worst network of the major carriers. Their customer service staff, and their management routinely ignores or is pretty much on the border of dysfunctional, and constantly try to use the practice of having you contact them by phone, only to then insist that you call them from a non-sprint phone to actually do any troubleshooting, or better yet so they could promise you the moon, but deliver. And following up with them usually getting them to try and punish you for actually holding them to their word!Even if I had the capital to invest in purchasing a major wireless network, I wouldn't be dumb enough to even THINK of giving Sprint that kind of satisfaction, just like they refused to grant mesatisfaction as soon as they started messing with the network here.