Jesse Drucker in this morning’s Wall Street Journal writes, that with SBC-AT&T deal done, who will be next? MCI is one, name that is on everyone’s lips, but Jesse’s sources tell him that Verizon making a big for Sprint is not out of the question. My sources are saying that could be a likely and smart move for Verizon, and I wrote that yesterday in my column, The Business 2.0 Telecom Report. If you read through the column, it looks like soon enough BellSouth and SBC will tie the knot. Also if you read the column, you will find a little clue to why Verizon didn’t flinch at the news of T-SBC deal!
PMI is an awfully expensive and unavoidable cost of doing these mergers.
But the one thing Verizon has to gain (and also SBC+BLS), is that by taking out Sprint they’ll cut the MSO’s off at the pass.
The big problem is that they’ll get a nice global network, but not alot of customers.
What will the FCC do, if MSO’s could only do a resell deal with T-Mobile or Nextel? Should the FCC even consider resell deals?
Think about the spectrum sell off from a VZ+Sprint deal? Sprint already has enough inventory for (VZ+PCS)*2, if they merger will the spectrum divestatures ruin the revenue from future spectrum sales?
My thinking is that a merged FON + NXTL is all the more attractive to Verizon. From a quality of subscriber point of view, it is Nextel subscribers that Verizon really covets. Of course, that deal seems like it would be impossible for regulators to swallow, but such has been said before and the deal got done. If one wants to get really hypothetical, how about a two part deal where Verizon buys Sprint + Nextel then sells the Sprint PCS (not landline) network and customers to Vodaphone in exchange for Vodaphone’s minority stake in Verizon Wireless. This gives Verizon the stuff it really wants from the deal while Vodaphone gets greater control of its US operations.
Verizon….yea I can remember the times when it was GTE before the BellSouth merger. Of course for that merger to go through GTE had to take its BBN Planet acquistion and spin it out as Genuity for the whole deal to get approved. Why is it that everyone seems to think these huge mergres are all going to happen? Am I going to see us go from SBC, AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, MCI, Nextel down to just SBCzilla, Verizamonster, and MCI?
Is this really good for the market? Do we honestly think this is going to cause cost to the consumers to go down? Do we honestly kid ourselves that fiber to the *insert demarc here* is going to happen faster if we allow these kinds of deal to go through? Sure these companies do a good job at providing dialtone to us, but honestly, when was the last time a Baby Bell didn’t stick it to us somehow for advanced data services?
As for the cellular market seeing it go from the old crop to just Cingular, Verizon and T-Mobile seems a bit scary too.
Why don’t we just let them create the old monopoly while we are at it! It certainly seems the way things are going and I for one don’t like it one bit.