Todd Allcock <elecconnec@AmericaOnLine.com> amazed us all with the
following in news:fvp0e9$ktl$1@aioe.org:

> At 05 May 2008 23:25:34 -0500 The Bob wrote:
>
>> Agree 100% and it makes me wonder what magic pill T-Mo has to cure
>> it.CDMA/GSM makes no more sense than CDMA/iDen.
>
>
> True, but this might simply be a spectrum grab. Sprint is bleeding
> customers, so given the churn rate, the customer base itself isn't
> really worth much- T-Mo would really just be buying licenses,
> infrastructure, and headaches!

You need to look at ARPU before making that statement. While churn is
high, there are still 50+ million paying customers on the books, far more
than T-Mo can claim. If they were simply looking for pectrum, buying the
Nextel portion of the portfolio would make more sense.

>
> (The old) AT&T and Cingular certainly had some hurdles converting
> their
> TDMA networks to GSM, but they managed to pull it off in the long run.
> T- Mo might be thinking that adding Sprint's spectrum (if you'll
> pardon the pun!) is worth the pain of migrating one technology to the
> other. Like with the GAIT and GSM/TDMA handsets offered by Cingular
> and AT&T during the transition, a few GSM/CDMA combo handsets (like
> the "world" Blackberries and Global Q Sprint and Verizon offer now,
> but reworked to use American GSM as well) could ease the transition to
> whatever technology (most likely GSM, to leverage their international
> networks) T-Mo settles on, and give customers instant access to both
> networks without waiting for any conversion.
>
>
> It wouldn't be easy, or pretty, to pull off, but no one besides T-Mo
> (or maybe Alltel) is really capable of acquiring Sprint- with the
> recent 700 MHz auctions, both AT&T and Verizon are close to, at, (or
> over) the 95 MHz spectrum "soft cap" in many markets, and couldn't
> acquire Sprint without some serious divestiture (most likely to T-Mo
> anyway!)
>
>
>
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