Unlikely Bedfellows

I'm wondering if there's more rumor than truth here.   If I were Clearwire, I would be laying track to get my service up and out and not chatting up the competition.  Sprint is the majority owner of Clearwire and it's unlikely that Sprint would permit Clearwire to do such a deal with it's rival.    T-Mobile has gone on record as stating they are moving ahead with their HSDPA roll-out,  making them a direct competitor to Clearwire and Sprint.  While it's true, spectrum has always been an issue for T-Mobile,  if Clearwire wanted to host a spectrum garage sale, I don't think Sprint would stand for a sale to a head-on competitor like T-Mobile.

 

There also have been rumors about Deutsche Telekom talking to Sprint about a T-Mobile buy or outright acquisition of Sprint.  My bet is no.  Here's why:  Sprint is still integrating the Nextel acquisition, operating both CDMA and IDEN networks.  So, why would anyone want to throw GSM into the mix?  This is tough stuff, integrating dissimilar technologies.  It's costly, too, when you're supporting multiple systems within a market.  It's even more costly when you look at migrating everything, on a national scale,  to a single network.  Just think of all the handsets/devices you need to swap out!   Very costly and hard to justify on a market level, let alone on a national scale. Once you get beyond the technological aspect, then there's the financial and regulatory hurdles.

While there could possibly be some room for a more expansive inter-carrier relationships (perhaps something outside the U.S.), that would most likely require new devices and may not be worth the trouble.  If I were manning the wheel at Sprint, I'd be keenly focused on my investment in Clearwire and making that pay off.   Sprint's Hesse has already stated that if Clearwire is in need of additional funding to finish the market builds, Sprint will ante up. He is clearly going to make that investment pay off.