Sprint proves money can solve problems, buys iPCS to settle litigation
Considering Sprint's financial position and the overall credit market, we're not exactly sure where the carrier managed to pick up $831 million, which it promptly used to acquire affiliate iPCS and take on $405 million of net debt. If you'll recall, the aforesaid youngin' was worrying papa way back in May of 2008, and it seems that Sprint has finally had enough of this whole "litigation" thing. The acquisition puts all of the court battling to rest (or at least it's expected to), enabling the operator to stop divesting its iDEN network in select iPCS markets. Money may not buy happiness, but it sure buys a good muzzle.[Via Reuters]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dramane @ Oct 19th 2009 2:07PM
As a Spring shareholder i say good buy and good riddance of the iPCS always lingering lawsuits. Now lets get rid of Nextel and back to the fundamentals here Dan Hesse.
teknikkle @ Oct 19th 2009 2:07PM
waits for the ''this is why sprint will go bk in 60 days'' comments...
James @ Oct 19th 2009 2:14PM
I live in iPCS affiliate market. I hope this changes things because iPCS's customer service sucks.
bill @ Oct 19th 2009 2:31PM
"Considering Sprint's financial position and the overall credit market, we're not exactly sure where the carrier managed to pick up $831 million..."
Sprint has $4.5B of cash on hand, and the iPCS deal is about 10% of that amount. The remainder of the $831M is an assumption of debt.
Try doing some research before spewing.
youngcalihottie @ Oct 19th 2009 4:29PM
i'd say that for once this is one of sprints smarter purchases. it should have never had to come to this, but they screwed themselves over royally like morons with their original ipcs contract. this was pretty much the only way out of it, and i could easily see it costing sprint more money in the long run to continue dealing with the ipcs drama. ipcs either had great lawyers writing their contracts/winning their court battles, or they actually just outsmarted sprint yet again by pulling all this crap so that they could be in a position to sell to sprint.