Analyst: Sprint Must Buy Clearwire or Move On Without Them
Talk about”shocker”: Patrick Comach from Zachary Investment Research says Sprint must move fast in light of the proposed T-Mobile/AT&T merger that would See the carrier going from second-to-last to last place in the drop of a pen. (You know, an actual ink pen – one like the Department of Justice would use should they approve the deal. Try and keep up, folks.)
The firm says that the area they need to focus on more than anything is 4G. The carrier long-advertised that they had America’s first 4G network. (And it wasn’t even real 4G at the time.) And although their claims may be true, being the first means nothing if you can’t get it to all of your consumers. Clearwire is still going through the pains, but Comach believes that if Sprint doesn’t buy them now then they’re eventually going to sink into nothingness.
And if they do allow Clearwire to fail, they’d better have a damn good backup plan because aside from their unlimited usage offerings, there isn’t much giving Sprint an edge over its competition. Verizon has already started rolling its LTE network out and has their first 4G device on the market with more to come.
To make things worse, Verizon could end up enabling more customers with 4G by the end of this year than Sprint and Clearwire were able to do in over three years. Yea, I’d say it’s high time to make a significant move in this space or you’re going to be left in the dust if AT&T and T-Mobile end up getting married at the end of the year. (Yes, I know that joke.) [via WSJ]