The CEO of Sprint Nextel has said the US’ number three-operator is actively looking for spectrum to acquire.
The Kansas-based telco faces surging data demand from its users, but will also have a substantial war chest for acquisitions providing…
The CEO of Sprint Nextel has said the US’ number three-operator is actively looking for spectrum to acquire.
The Kansas-based telco faces surging data demand from its users, but will also have a substantial war chest for acquisitions providing Softbank’s deal to buy 70% of Sprint goes through.
In an interview with Bloomberg, CEO Dan Hesse said the company is looking for spectrum deals with other companies or through government sales.
Following the agreement of the Softbank deal last October Sprint bought spectrum and customers from US Cellular for US$480m, and had an offer of US$2.2bn to buy out the rest of Clearwire accepted.
While a portion of the remaining Clearwire shareholders have already said they would sell to Sprint, the process is being held up by a higher counter offer from Dish which the Clearwire board has yet to decide on.
Hesse said that acquiring Clearwire would give Sprint a strong spectrum position for a period of time, but he stressed that the operator was taking the long-term view with users’ data habits expected to go only one way.
Sprint aims to catch up to AT&T and Verizon Wireless, the two operators that are dominating the US market, and spectrum can be a barrier.
Both AT&T and Verizon have been very acquisitive in the spectrum market. In January AT&T bought US$1.9bn of 700MHz b block spectrum from Verizon; spectrum which Verizon was obliged to sell to get regulatory approval for its US$3.9bn purchase of AWS spectrum from a consortium of cablecos last year.
AT&T has also made a number of other smaller spectrum acquisitions.
Sprint’s capex budget has been taken up by its infrastructure upgrade project Network Vision, but the Softbank deal would give it additional firepower to acquire frequencies going forward.
