NASCAR may be forced to rename its Cup series yet again
A deal is not imminent and while the talks are on-going, participants caution that any agreement would at best be weeks away. The board of Sprint, which has been struggling with significant subscriber losses, is divided about whether to sell the company as some of them hold a belief that a turnaround for the company may not be far off, according to people briefed on its position. A spokesman at Sprint declined to comment on what he called rumors and speculation.
05/12/08 How much longer before Sprint and Nextel with its proprietary networks go belly up? Sprint has tried to stay competitive through a variety of methods. It released new smartphones and sought to expand its wireless offerings. However, despite its best efforts, the nation's third largest carrier lost more ground to it larger competitors, AT&T and Verizon, in Q1 2008.
The traditional Sprint network and the Nextel division of Sprint — the mobile phone network which it acquired for $35 billion in 2005 — currently have 52.8 million subscribers after losing over 1.1 million customers during the quarter. The lost customers are "post-paid" customers, meaning customers who usually pay a monthly bill. The loss indicates growing trouble. In all of 2007, Sprint only lost 1.2 million customers, but steep losses began in Q4 2007, with the departure of 1.07 million customers.
These losses are particularly notable as Sprint has various severance penalties to try to dissuade customers from leaving. The large customer exodus indicates that customers are willing to pay the price to ditch Sprint, a very bad sign for the carrier.
As a result of the losses, Sprint saw its revenue fall 7.5 percent to $9.33B USD. In all the company lost $505M USD over the quarter, up from a $202M USD loss the year prior.
The losses have Sprint reeling. CEO Dan Hesse refused to comment on rumors that Sprint may dump Nextel to focus on its own cell phone network. He did say that such a move would involve "significant complexities".
Did Sprint and Nextel really think NASCAR fans were stupid enough to switch to phones that don't work around the world? The sponsorship of NASCAR is not helping the company one iota so look for them to work on an early exit strategy. This dog doesn't hunt.
05/05/08 Deutsche Telekom AG is considering a bid for Sprint Nextel Corp., according to a media report Monday.
Bonn-based Deutsche Telekom did not immediately comment on the report in The Wall Street Journal. Were it to make such a deal, it would catapult its T-Mobile wireless unit to the top spot in the U.S. market. In its report, The Wall Street Journal said deliberations were at "a preliminary stage and management may very well turn away," according to the people it quoted.
Any bid, the paper's sources said, "could still be weeks, or even months away."
Sprint Nextel is the third-biggest provider of cell phone services in the U.S. and has a market capitalization of approximately $22 billion. AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless are the top two U.S. providers.
If this happens NASCAR will be forced to rename its top series yet again. It went from Winston Cup to Nextel Cup and then to Sprint Cup. Since Sprint now has the contract for naming rights to the Cup series, The next move might be to the T-Mobile Cup. AP Article
Better news however, would be for consumers. Since T-Mobile uses GSM wireless technology, perhaps they will convert all their users over to GSM, who like AT&T users, have phones and data devices that work worldwide. Almost the entire world uses GSM to allow consumers seamless access anywhere in the world, unlike the technologies used by companies like Verizon and Sprint Nextel that have limited use outside the USA. Getting Sprint and Nextel users on GSM will leave the poor Verizon users as the last ones stuck buying devices from Verizon (at an extra cost to them) that have a dual chip that also uses GSM. However, right now it is not quad-band so a Verizon World Phone still is not really a 'world' phone.