Some particularly juicy rumors die hard, and this one certainly qualifies: CNBC is reporting that SK Telecom is looking to hook up with some private equity firms to buy out Sprint Nextel, though a deal is "not imminent." This one's been
making the rounds since last year, though it's possible that SKT sees some new impetus for making a break into the US market now that it's
sold off its share in Helio -- and buying the third largest carrier in the country would certainly qualify as "making a break." It's claimed that SKT's only interested in completing a friendly deal -- no crazy hostile takeovers here -- and some of Sprint's board members aren't keen on the idea at this point, so it's definitely a hit-or-miss proposition. If this all means we can get even half of Korea's domestic hardware on US airwaves, then hey, no complaints on this end.
Update: The Wall Street Journal
is now suggesting that Sprint and SKT are investigating some sort of joint venture -- not a full-on acquisition -- that would see the lovebirds work together on handsets and services. Possible, but we're curious to know what exactly Sprint brings to the table in that equation. Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
posted Jul 15th 2008 4:20PM
I can only hope and dream! I'm with you Chris!
A joint venture only makes sense with a South Korean Provider. With Verizon going the LTE way instead of WiMax, Sprint is going to need some allies. South Korea is pretty much adopting the WiMax model Sprint is. What I like about Sprint, other than them being my hometown company that does a ton for KC, is that I think their decision to go WiMax is the protrayal of a company who is planning for the long-term, not for the short-term. They know NexTel and iDEN is dead, they are squeezing CDMA's technology for all it's worth to compete and doing successfully in the face of Qualcomm's stronghold on IP and the rest of the world trying to figure out how to progress forward on GSM.
They are looking to not make the same mistake by going with a technology controlled by a tyrannical company like Qualcomm; they are going with an IETF standard that was designed from the ground-up to be able to be enhanced greatly for speed and mobility; even some day be the successor to WiFi or at least be bundled with it in chipsets. The other advantage is, while they are required to have less distance between towers, they can essentially have an infrastructure that is consumer-run with future wireless routers being built with dual WiFi/WiMax chipsets and serving as range extenders to dead areas.
On top of it all, their first device to use the technology will be the Nokia N810 WiMax edition, which runs a debian-derivative OSS platform called Maemo which is soon to be complimented by the open-sourcing of Symbian OS. The provisioning of devices will be handled via SSL OTA.
No ESN numbers, no SIM cards, only MACs. Switching devices will be as easy as logging into your Sprint account.
looooooooooool.
what sprint brings to the table. holy crap that had me rolling lol
Ummmmm, perhaps an analogy will help you:
Korea:WiBro :: US:WiMax
sprint brings the antennas to the table? if you all remember, Helio was piggybacked on Sprint's network, so this allows all the new and upcoming helio headsets to stay on track.
and what the guy above me said.
Sprint brings scale to the table. If SK and Sprint collaborate on handset designs the joint purchasing power will help lower costs for SKT. SKT will being some damn cool products and services. They are always showing off fancy services at international meetings.