Comcast buys Sprint 2018
Att & Verizon are the two largest telecom companies in the US. T-Mobile has become a competitive 3rd player in the US. Sprint however lags the competition and has a bad brand reputation. Sprint dropped the ball going into the smartphone evolution. These customers left Sprint and will never come back. The only way for sprint to last is giving up its name. Sprint just changing its name will do absolutely nothing and customers will see right through that. If sprint was bought out and the name changed under new hands I believe customers would give them A chance again.
The government has shut down mergers of T-Mobile and Sprint for competition reasons. The US government would have no issue with Sprint being bought by a cable company such as Comcast. Comcast xfinity mobile has launched and is slowly growing by packaging your cable, internet, and now mobile phones. We expect comcast to grow a wireless customer base off of its current subscribers. Eventually this growth will slow because the majority of xfinity mobile customers will be current Comcast customers. If Comcast purchased sprint they would immediately change the store names to xfinty mobile. These small stores will work as mini xfinity stores being able to handle most comcast customers needs. The sprint network along with Comcast’s home and business internet network combined could be very beneficial for the companies to compete in the move to 5G. ATT & Verizon are investing heavily in 5G infrastructure and will leave Sprint uncompetitive in the 5G future if they remain a stand alone company. The purchase of sprint along with its current base would give Comcast the chance to overtake T-Mobile as the third largest cellphone carrier in the nation. Sprint has been desperate to partner with T-Mobile for years but that ship has sailed with government roadblocks stopping that merger.
Comcast is the only real purchaser that could benefit with sprint. I expect Comcast to make an acquisition offer to Lions Gate. If they make an offer, Amazon could easily outbid them. This would force Comcast to walk away from the deal. Comcast would likely try to make another purchase to satisfy investors appetite after losing out on Lions Gate. Comcast could purchase Sprint & Lions Gate but I don’t see them making multiple large acquisitions all in the same year. These are not the only takeover targets in the Telecom and Media space. We also expect CBS, Viacom, Discovery & Barstool Sports to be purchased in 2018 & 2019
