Right. This is perhaps the dumbest story ever printed. It appears that
the unnamed analyst, which right there gives you a big idea into the
validity of the supposed rumor, is just looking at it purely from a
financial standpoint and not a technical one.

The notion that a price war would force a financially healthy company
like T-M into doing something with a financialy UNhealthy company like
Sprint-Nextel is pretty dumb. Fact is, any public company is
technically for sale every day, but very little happens in terms of
rumors becoming fact. The technological hurdles to this one alone seem
to make it beyond laughable.

The best opportunity T-M has had since taking that name in the U.S.
following the VoiceStream deal was to buy the original AT&T Wireless
when it could be had at bargain basement prices. At that point,
neither had invested significant money into a next-generation network,
they both had compatible technologies and integration would have been
relatively easy -- at least for two companies of that size.

But they passed and we have the market sector that's present now. I
don't see it changing anytime soon unless Verizon/Vodafone wanted to
make a run for Sprint/Nextel. That too is unlikely since Verizon's
spending heavily to roll out FIOS across the Northeast.

["Followup-To:" header set to alt.cellular.sprintpcs.]

Oh, it's certainly not risk-free. I just said I could see an upside to
such a merger. :)

Well..The Sprint CDMA and Nextel iDen merge worked out pretty well.

Didn't it?

[We now resume your normal broadcast]

Actually, the 'new billing system' that sprint is in the process of
migrating all of its custoemrs to, is the same platform that T-mobile
uses.
This might be a shocker, but that particular system was originally
created for 'Nextel' ...go figure.  Each of the copanies name the
system
something different.  T-mobile calls their's 'Sampson', while Sprint's
seems to go by many different names.  UBP, Ensemble, USC, CSM,
sView, nView, many other's that we mutter under our breath when it is
running really slow..... :-)  BUT, the program itself is called
Customer Service Management, and was created or at least marketed by
Amdocs.  When I worked for T-mobile a few years ago, I would
always get a little bit of a kick out of pulling up the billing
system, and seeing 'Nextel' on the flash page as it opened.

I think it would be a strain still trying to mix the two [3?]
technologies, but the article did say it was Deutsche Telekom, that
'MAY consider it.
It would not be unthinkable that they would leave the 2 companies
completely or mostly seperate in their operations.  Again this is all
just
speculation, and neither one of the companies makes it a habbit to
talk abot rumors of mergers.  It seemed that while I was working with
T-mo
that we were rumored to be being taken over by some company or other
about every other week.  And yet... it did not happen.

On Mar 7, 3:41 pm, "Todd Allcock" <eleccon...@AmericaOnLine.com>
wrote: