The FCC and Justice Department are growing concerned about rising...
The FCC and Justice Department are growing concerned about rising duopoly control of the U.S. wireless industry, Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse told Wells Fargo analysts Friday. Hesse and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son met with the analysts to discuss Softbank’s…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
proposed buy of 70 percent of Sprint Nextel, Wells Fargo analyst Jennifer Fritzsche said Monday in an investor report. Hesse told analysts he does not believe the FCC and Justice think four is the “magic number” of national wireless players -- just that they “would like stronger players to compete” against a perceived Verizon Wireless-AT&T duopoly, Fritzsche said. Hesse sees T-Mobile’s move to go public, via its merger with MetroPCS, as positive on “many different levels,” Fritzsche said. Still, Son said Softbank will need to “wait and see” about making its own bid for MetroPCS, according to Fritzsche. Analysts left the meeting more confident of Sprint Nextel’s long-term business strategy and its place in wireless market, Fritzsche said, saying the SoftBank deal “will allow [Sprint] to capitalize on opportunities which it had to pass on or miss in the past.” Under the deal announced Oct. 15, SoftBank will buy the stake for $20.1 billion (CD Oct 16 p1).