Will Sprint Buy the Rest of Clearwire?

TownHall Investment Research Analyst Gerard Hallaren says Sprint management has made comments that leading some investors to believe the company iss actively considering a bid for the rest of Clearwire.

"As best we can tell, the speculation is based on a perceived desire by Sprint control its own destiny by owning its 4G network and on synergies created by combining the two companies," says Hallaren.

Some people will contest the notion, as it flies directly against the rest of Sprint's recent initiatives to outsource operations that are not directly customer facing, and concentrate on marketing and customer-facing operations. It is worth noting, however, that Sprint has not acted to divest its actual ownership of facilities, with the exception of tower sites.

The Sprint "4G" marketing platform seems to be getting a lift from the HTC Evo launch, and that appears to be prompting the speculation about whether full ownership of Clearwire (Sprint now owns 57 percent) would add value.

Despite some possible strategic logic, namely the ability to use the Clearwire network anyway it wishes to, there would be obstacles.

Given Sprint's weak financial position, a dilutive equity deal would be required. Hallaren suggests a reverse takeover might be considered.

One issue is that the other Clearwire joint venture partners bought most of their stock at far higher levels, around $17, or $10 higher than the current price.

The public owns only 10 percent of Clearwire, while Intel (11 percent) and Comcast (nine percent) are the largest holders after Sprint. Time Warner owns five percent, Google three percent, Brighthouse one percent, Eagle River four percent.

Perhaps the bigger issue is the different business models. Clearwire is mostly a wholesale provider, though it has some retail operations. Sprint really is a retailer with some wholesale operations. It isn't clear how much more Sprint benefits from increasing its 57-percent stake.

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"The World Has Changed," or Has It?

"The world has changed," Orange Business CEO Says

Speaking to an audience of enterprise executives, Orange Business Services CEO
Vivek Badrinath noted that the world has been changed forever as a consequence of the economic crisis.

"The world is not the same as it was two years ago in terms of what's expected in this room," he noted. The logical question is what those new things are that seem to have changed the market so vastly. The answers aren't easy to figure out.

"New collaboration and social networks for customers and employees are emerging and we now need to work around multiple interactions with our end customers," he says. Sure, but hardly a need that was "transformed" because of the economic crisis.

"We have both the obligation to provide Sarbanes-Oxley compatible, efficient, protected environments for our customers and we have to face the challenges of openness," he says. Yes, but that was true before the economic crisis.

"You're asking us to be faster because the world is moving fast," he says. Agreed, but hardly something new.

"Our ambition is to become the leading developer of applications; to establish ourselves as a true integrator of services," he says. That is the more-shocking statement, perhaps.

Specifically, Orange plans to add a new layer of services that would, for example, enable CIOs to manage all BlackBerrys (password management, policy management), no matter what network they are on.

Services underpinned by the core network expertise seem to be the direction Orange wants to go. "Telecom can get commoditized but its the customer experience, with the services and systems we bring, that defines the value that we bring to this market," he says.

All worthy goals. But one suspects Badrinath was engaging in a bit of enthusiastic hyperbole. I see nothing here that speaks to a "world that is not the same."

It is an ambitious, worthy goal to aim to become the leading developer of applications, and to own the customer experience. Badrinath is right to note the huge change this would represent in a new world with many third-party experience providers. It just isn't entirely clear this has changed much because fo the global recession.

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How to Get Rid of the "Buzzing" When Watching the World Cup

 Tired of the "buzzing" sounds fans are making at the World Cup? The vuvuzela is responsible, but the sound of those long horns can be muted if you have access to an equalizer on the device you are using to watch the action.

If you are watching the games on any device with an equalizer you can control, muting four specific frequencies will eliminate the buzzing while leaving the game sounds and commentary alone.

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Global Broadband Access Market Up to $414 Billion by 2020

The global broadband access market, including both fixed and mobile modes, will increase from $274 billion in 2010 to $416 billion in 2020, an increase of 52 percent, according to the Telco 2.0 Initiative and Disruptive Analysis.

More than half the revenue growth will come from wholesale and “two-sided” fees for improved access capacity and quality. This could include fees paid by business partners who want access to network service provider features and services.

By 2020, mobile broadband will be worth $138 billion, or 32 percent of the total broadband access industry revenues.

The analysts predict growth of “bulk wholesale” revenues, where capacity might be purchased by a third party as a component of some other service. Services provided to electrical utilities or other parties with telemetry needs are other examples.

“Comes with data” business models such as used by Amazon Kindle to sell content also will play a bigger role. Here, a product vendor or service provider contracts for data capacity with the broadband provider, and bundles it in a combined offer while the user does not have a subscription or direct relationship with the telco.

“Slice and dice” wholesale is more complex, and more controversial. This involves operators selling data capacity in fine-grained “parcels” to parties other than the user, who is typically also paying for some level of access.

This type of “two-sided” business model could involve deals with consumer electronics vendors for extra high-quality streams over existing broadband lines, or to content or application providers where they pick up the bill for data transmission rather than the end-user.

Any way one looks at the matter, it appears that various wholesale or enterprise revenues are going to be a bigger part of the overall mobile revenue stream in the future.

AT&T: iPhone 4 Pre-Order Sales Were Ten Times Higher Than First Day 3GS Sales

AT&T says sales of the iPhone 4 were 10-times higher than the first day of pre-ordering for the iPhone 3G S last year.

AT&T also said that they are suspending pre-ordering today in order to fulfill the orders they’ve already received.

AT&T: iPhone 4 Pre-Order Sales Were Ten Times Higher Than First Day 3GS Sales

Apple Apologizes For iPhone 4 Pre-Order Failure

Apple on Wednesday said that it saw the largest numbers of iPhone 4 pre-orders the company has ever taken in a single day, with 600,000 devices sold already.

Apple confirmed widespread reports that order and approval systems have failed, faced with the pressure of iPhone 4 demand, and apologized for the technical hiccups. Too much success can do that to a provisioning and ordering system.

Apple Apologizes For iPhone 4 Pre-Order Screw Ups - PCWorld

U.S. Mobile Broadband Will Grow 36% to 2014

According to a new International Data Corporation forecast, the U.S. mobile broadband market will grow from 6.5 million subscribers in 2009 to 30.2 million in 2014, which accounts for a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 36.1 percent over the forecast period.

Carrier-subsidized netbooks and tablet devices such as the Apple iPad are driving the trend.

IDC - Press Release - prUS22380410