Sprint's longstanding reputation for lousy customer service, poor network coverage, high churn and Keystone Kops-style management disorganization has finally turned the telecom into an acquisition target. According to Merrill Lynch, anyway.
In a report entitled "Walking Toward Sprint?" the financial group claims that T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom (DT) may consider acquiring the wireless outfit, whose worsening losses have left it ripe for a buyout. By swallowing Sprint, DT could gain some spectrum in the states and stave off a price war between the mobile carriers, or so the "thinking" goes.
Thing is, an acquisition of Sprint entails an acquisition of Sprint's problems–and there are many. It would also require DT, which operates a GSM/EDGE network, to manage Sprint's 3G CDMA network and Nextel's legacy iDEN system. That's three different network standards. And then there's Sprint's WiMax operation, XHOM, to deal with. That's the makings of a real mess right there.
I hope for DT's sake that its merger-and-acquisitions team is smarter than Merrill Lynch's analysts. Better to keep your distance and let Sprint spin off its Nextel brand than become another chapter in its Greek tragedy of a business story.
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