It was only two weeks ago that Sprint said it would in fact rejuvenate the Nextel network rather than sell it.  Now a court has given them 12 months to shut it down in 81 markets mostly in the Midwest due to conflicts in their affiliate agreement with iPCS.  Even assuming that Sprint manages to [...]

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From the consolidation in the telecom and fiber sector over the last four years came fewer and larger companies and difficult integrations. Two of the most aggressive rollup artists were Level 3 Communications (LVLT) in the first half and Zayo in the second, each assembling a vast array of mixed assets.  The two are not [...]

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As I read through Sprint’s earnings release on Friday, one question kept running through my mind:  “Just how long can they keep doing this?”  Every quarter, another 2-3% sequential drop in revenues as customers flee.   They’re going to have to step up and fix the situation soon, else we will get to see what happens [...]

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TW Telecom reported earnings after the bell today, although their CC is tomorrow morning.  I wasn’t too far off in my guesses - too high on network revenue and too low on data but it canceled out.  Overall, revenue of $291.6M was exactly what they promised in September, slower growth reflecting some churn from spreading [...]

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CenturyTel (CTL) is buying Embarq (EQ).  Apparently the M&A market in telecom isn’t quite dead!  In this case though, it’s a bit odd to think about CTL as the buyer since it is the smaller of the two.  Embarq’s revenue hovers at $6.3B, whereas CenturyTel is in the $2.6B range.  Indeed, CenturyTel shareholders would own [...]

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On Friday I speculated that Carl Icahn might be planning a ’short form merger’ for network operator XO Communications (XOHO), as he increases his holdings to near 90%.  However, it turns out that this threshold is not as interesting as it might have otherwise been.  Back in late July, when Icahn refinanced XO’s senior debt [...]

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In a filing yesterday with the SEC, Carl Icahn increased his ownership of network operator XO in a private transaction, adding 3,995,000 common shares and 500,000 series A preferred shares to his holdings.  Billionaire buys a few more shares during a panic, that’s not much of a headline perhaps - except that Icahn appears [...]

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In a NY Times Bits blog post, Saul Hansell makes the case that Netflix may be in a great position as online video develops.   His point boils down to the fact that Netflix has an existing business that acts as an on-ramp to the new services.  Their DVD rental service transitions naturally to a stream-to-the-set-top-box [...]

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