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:
Who knew billionaires were so petty, sensitive and funny? And, more importantly, how awesome is it that billionaires are so petty, sensitive and funny?
This realization came together this week in gut-busting reality watching Softbank and Dish Network get into a cat-fight over whose bid for cash-starved Sprint Nextel was superior.
Softbank got the chuckle-fest rolling when its Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son took an hour or so to explain how Softbank’s $20.1 billion acquisition attempt of a 70% stake in Sprint Nextel was superior to Dish Network’s $25.5 billion acquisition attempt of a 68% stake in Sprint Nextel. This “my offer is better than your offer” presentation included a lot of numbers and projections that seemed to make the case that indeed Softbank’s seemingly lower offer was better. (Dang, that Masayoshi Son is a good salesman!)
Check out Son’s stand-up here.
But, I was still not convinced. Or at least my desire for a more childish explanation as to why the Softbank offer was better was not satiated. Thankfully, Son and Softbank were able to quench that thirst.
In Softbank’s presentation as to the superiority of its offer, the company trotted out a slide comparing the “governance” structure of their respective companies, with Softbank labeled as “shareholder protection” while Dish was labeled “Ergen-dominated,” taking a dig at Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen.
That would be on page 6 of this presentation.
“Ergen-dominated?!?” Classic!
But, thankfully, Softbank was not finished handing out the ha-ha’s.
Softbank also noted that the Dish offer was “wrong, incomplete and illusory,” or basically stating that Dish’s offer was put together with someone lacking in basic math skills and probably needed to brush their teeth.
Son then went at Ergen himself, calling him an “amateur” and “desperate” to find a way to utilize the 30 megahertz of spectrum Dish gained control over without having to enter the hotly-competitive mobile space on his own. And, just to show that Softbank was serious about dissin’ Dish, Son added:
“I just deliver the results, instead of big-mouthing about the future,” and “Do you want to attach a satellite dish to your smartphone?”
“Satellite dish to your smartphone?!?” Get it? Dish is in the satellite business and if they buy Sprint … what? … get it? … never mind.
This was some gold-medal material, especially from what would be considered one of the most conservative organization structures outside of the Vatican: a cellphone company based in Japan.
Thankfully, Ergen was informed of Son’s stand-up routine, and is also not a person to take such “good-natured” ribbing standing on the sidelines. Ergen took to the stage, telling the USA Today in an interview that indeed Dish Network’s offer was better for Sprint Nextel and more importantly a Japanese cellphone company had no idea how to operate a cellphone company here in the United States.
“We are an American company, and the modernization of Sprint’s network will have to be done from the U.S.,” Ergen said. “You have to climb the towers here, and you’ll have to have U.S. employees who speak English. Operations command control will be in America. That’s good for jobs. It doesn’t mean that the other guys are bad. It’s just that we have an advantage.”
Wow! “Speak English?!?” Oh no he di’int!?!
Thankfully, oh yes he did.
Perhaps not realizing the direction his comments were taking, Ergen threw in a few more digs with slightly xenophobic overtones.
“If you have to lead tens of thousands of employees, culture matters,” and “We’re more culturally and geographically aligned with Sprint.”
I am not sure exactly what Ergen was trying to get at, but I think we all know exactly what Ergen was trying to get at.
Ergen also took a stab at previous concerns regarding Softbank’s infrastructure relationship with Chinese vendor Huawei, claiming national security should matter when deciding who is the best steward to give Sprint Nextel lunch money.
And, of course, as all of this is going on, poor Sprint Nextel is just trying to secure some sort of financial certainty so it can go about remaining competitive in the mobile space. My guess is that executives at rival carriers will be falling over themselves in providing more fodder for this tug-of-war, as the longer it drags on, the better it is for them and the worse it is for Sprint Nextel.
But, who cares. We want more funny. Especially when that funny comes backed by billions of dollars.
OK, enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Worst of the Week column. And now for some extras:
–T-Mobile USA this week finalized its merger/acquisition/whatever of MetroPCS, forming a new entity under the T-Mobile US brand that will operate both the T-Mobile and MetroPCS brands across GSM/GPRS/EDGE/UMTS/HSPA+/LTE/CDMA networks.
First tip for the new T-Mobile US: See if you can get Sprint Nextel to sell you its iDEN network on the cheap. They are not doing anything with it (except losing customers from it) and a few more letters for your current network technologies couldn’t hurt.
Second tip: While speaking with Sprint Nextel, ask them how awesome it is to run separate networks and brands. I am sure they will give you all kinds of great advice.
–The best advice always comes for the best sources. To wit: BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins (who I also believe plays the bad guy in the new “Iron Man 3” movie) told Bloomberg in an interview that the tablet market will disappear over the next five years. That’s right: That device you and everyone else around you can’t get enough of will cease to exist by mid-2018. (Better start putting those things up on EBay while you can still get a few bucks for ‘em.)
And who better to provide this bit of prognostication than the leader of a company with some experience in what it’s like to be on top in April, shot down in May.
I welcome your comments. Please send me an e-mail at dmeyer@rcrwireless.com.
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