Hello! And welcome to our Friday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
Disappointment.
That is all I felt this week following Clearwire’s acceptance of Sprint Nextel’s takeover bid. What “officially” started with a bid for $2.90 per share late last week, culminated in a furious negotiation process with an ending price of $2.97 per share. That’s right, it took the two companies four days to agree on a price that was 7 cents per share higher than the original bid.
Now, I don’t want to downplay those 7 cents in context to shareholders that may have had hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of Clearwire stock on the table. Heck, with a hundred thousand shares, those tense negotiations netted that stock owner an additional $7,000. Not chump change, but not exactly a princely sum in the world of telecom. I believe there a hundreds of YouTube clips of people complaining about international roaming fees higher than that.
And in the bigger picture, the deal increased from the original bid of $2.1 billion to $2.2 billion post-negotiations. Some might call that a rounding error.
I am also disappointed in the deal, as just last week I mentioned that to accept this offer would bring to an end one of the industry’s best reality shows. Not only did Clearwire accept the deal, but they did so in such a calmly manner. Why no counter-proposal “leaked” to the media claiming that the original offer was a “joke” and not worthy of even considering? Why not bring up the fact that Sprint Nextel, soon-to-be infused with billions from Softbank, is in no position to make such a low-ball proposal seeing that they are the one’s desperate for wireless spectrum, which Clearwire just so happens to have barrels of. (They do keep spectrum in barrels, don’t they?)
That last argument would be even better considering that a majority of the spectrum Clearwire has sitting around in old casks originally came from Sprint Nextel and that by holding out for more money to have that spectrum back would be Kardashian-worthy.
This could have then set up a counter-counter-claim by Sprint Nextel noting that Clearwire’s management was crazy to think that they even deserved a single penny over that original offer seeing that they were the company that had originally decided to launch mobile broadband services using WiMAX technology. (ZING!) I mean, who in their right mind would actually pick WiMAX? Sure, it’s got an awesome name, but WiMAX? Really?
Sprint Nextel could have also pointed out that Clearwire’s bushel of spectrum was in the 2.5 GHz band, which has the propagation characteristics of a life-long smoker, adding that it “gave” Clearwire all that spectrum as sort of a joke. Who would actually think of launching a nationwide WiMAX network using 2.5 GHz spectrum?
In the end, all of these great possibilities were for naught, and are now just left to bounce around in my skull. Luckily I have been fighting a monster of a cold for the past two weeks and that skull is filled with various over-the-counter drugs that make this virtual feud hilarious. It’s just too bad in the real world it all had to end so quick.
OK, enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Worst of the Week column. And now for some extras:
–This week I managed to snare 30 minutes on the phone with Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse, which was arranged by the company’s PR unit tied to Hesse celebrating his fifth year heading up the carrier. It must be said that Hesse has an easy-going nature about him, often noted by his typically casual dress style and perhaps backed by his current residence in the middle of the country. Sure, he has the credentials and degrees of a man who aught to be in the position that he is in, but you would be hard press to guess that from just talking with him.
While easy going, I did at least want to think that while chatting with him he was either sitting inside of a volcano lair on some private island somewhere or perhaps running to the local Starbucks using a private jetpack. You know, stuff we would all like wireless carrier executives to be doing.
I welcome your comments. Please send me an email at dmeyer@rcrwireless.com.
Bored? Why not follow me on Twitter?
