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:
Those of you with money to burn may have noticed one of your favorite wireless operators had quite the ride on Wall Street the past couple of weeks.
(I will give you 1 second to guess which wireless operator I am most referring to.)
That’s right, I am speaking of Sprint, which if it’s executives are not getting into Twitter spats with other executives, is giving its investors heart palpitations.
For the past several months Sprint’s stock had been trading around the $5 per share level, bolstered by what seemed to be positive news about its ongoing operational performance and expectations that its network issues were finally in the rearview mirror.
However, that enthusiasm seemed to have been forgotten as July began, with Sprint’s stock precipitously sliding to around $4.50 per share, then $4 per share and finally to a new 52-week low of $3.71 per share, before finally bouncing back this week to just under $4 per share.
I will admit that I have given up trying to understand the stock market, believing it’s all controlled by a room full of monkeys on typewriters that in their spare time help me with this column. But, since it seems the country’s entire financial future is increasingly tied to what these monkey are putting out, there must be some sort of importance to these valuations.
Financial analysts have fallen into two camps when it comes to Sprint: those that can’t believe the carrier’s stock has dropped so much, and those that can’t believe Sprint is still a standalone business. (These two sides are also typically either invested heavily in Sprint or not heavily invested in Sprint. Another one of those irritants that makes me mad with the monkeys pulling the strings.)
Those that can’t believe Sprint’s stock is so low point out that just taking into account the carrier’s spectrum holdings should place a much greater value on Sprint’s overall operations and thus justify a stock price significantly higher than where it sits today. Many of those same people also acquiesce to the notion that concerns regarding Sprint’s ability to turn around its network performance and that current majority owner Softbank’s willingness to continue funding that turn around are legitimate, though perhaps overly hyped, concerns.
But, over hyped or not, investors have obviously given Sprint a very short leash on which to compete with, which unfortunately is a tough way to compete in the current market. (Thanks T-Mobile US!) And, you really can’t blame them. It’s not like Sprint has a strong history of making good network, financial or operational decisions. (Cough … Nextel … cough … WiMAX … cough … Clear Pay.)
Sprint obviously has enough trouble as it is without a roomful of monkeys constantly throwing bananas at it for every decision it makes. I can’t see how it will be possible for Sprint to dig itself out of this mess while at the same time trying to make Wall Street happy.
If Softbank really want’s to turn around Sprint, Masayoshi Son should probably take some of his Alibaba winnings and take Sprint private, especially now as it seems he might be able to do so on the cheap. Otherwise, Sprint’s wild ride on Wall Street will continue to contribute to ailing hearts and provide plenty of fodder for this column.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Worst of the Week column. Here is a quick, but satisfying extra:
–I have always been considered “difficult” when it comes to the whole “G” description of network technologies, just ask my colleagues who I constantly battle with when it comes to what really is “4G.” (I still maintain that we are waiting for a true 4G network to be commercially launched, though the industry’s marketers have obviously decided that day passed years ago. My colleagues think I need to switch to decaf.)
I blame this neurosis on the fact that I came into the industry at a time when 1G was still around, 2G was dominant and 3G was just gaining traction. Who can forget all those wonderful arguments about what technology should be considered 3G waged by the same folks that brought us those wonderful technology wars.
It’s with this background that I find it appalling all the 5G talk that has grown in both din and scope over the past year. I know the guys working behind the scenes on evolving network technologies always need something new to throw their protractors at, and it’s probably good to keep those smart people busy on the next “G” then it would be to have them figure out real problems.
For the most part, I am trying to just brush off this 5G chatter as a necessary evil, and also to keep my focus on the launch of true 4G services. (Who needs more coffee?)
This is all a setup to describe my consternation this week with the near-constant flow of “4.5G” talk coming out of the Mobile World Congress event in Asia.
Look, I know it’s much easier to talk about the technology being worked on by just giving it some random number. But, we all know there will never be a generation of mobile technology that ends with a .5 or .25 or .75. It’s just stupid!
Some tried the same thing when it came to 3G, with various references to HSPA as 3.5G or 3.75G, or with 2G when EDGE was considered 2.5G or 2.75G. End of the day, HSPA was, is and shall always be 3G; same with EDGE being 2G; and the same with nothing ever being 4.5G.
So, let’s cut the crap now before this get’s out of hand, or before I become even more difficult to deal with.
I welcome your comments. Please send me an e-mail at dmeyer@rcrwireless.com.
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