The move comes just ahead of a vote of Clearwire shareholders scheduled for later Tuesday — a vote that clearly wasn’t going to go Sprint’s way. Sprint, which already owns just more than half of Clearwire, needed the approval of the majority of Clearwire’s minority shareholders — some of which vocally opposed the deal.

With the new offer, Clearwire said it is adjourning the scheduled meeting without taking any action, and its board will review the new offer. The meeting is now set to resume May 30.

“Consistent with its fiduciary duties and in consultation with its financial and legal advisors, the Special Committee of the Clearwire Board of Directors will review this revised proposal from Sprint,” Clearwire said.

It’s unclear, though, whether the bump will be enough to satisfy shareholders such as Crest Financial, who have said they believe that Clearwire is worth significantly more than Sprint’s original $2.97-per-share offer. Sprint’s offer has also been contingent upon its deal with SoftBank going through, and Dish Network is also offering a rival bid for Sprint.

Sprint touted the benefits of its increased bid, while also saying it was the company’s “best and final offer.”

“The revised offer demonstrates Sprint’s commitment to closing the Clearwire transaction and improving its competitive position in the U.S. wireless industry,” Sprint said in a statement. “Sprint’s proposal provides a clear path forward for Clearwire and the merger provides attractive value for shareholders of both companies.”

Update, 10:25 a.m.: Crest Financial said it opposes the new bid as well and took issue with Clearwire’s handling of things, saying it should have a competitive bid process if it is going to sell itself.

“Clearwire is acting in its usual stockholder-unfriendly way by adjourning the special meeting to grant Sprint the ability to pose a new, still inadequate offer,” Crest general counsel David K. Schumacher said in a statement. “This is a consistent theme of this Board: Do everything possible to secure an undesirable merger with Sprint at a below market price.”

Crest also sent a letter to Clearwire’s board, urging them to reject the new bid.

The waiver allows Sprint to share certain details with Dish in order that Dish might make a formal bid. Previously, Sprint only had permission to get more information from Dish on its bid.

Both Dish and SoftBank say theirs is the best offer for Sprint. Sprint’s board has recommended approval of the SoftBank offer at a shareholder meeting next month. However, a special committee of Sprint directors is currently evaluating the Dish proposal to see if it might lead to a higher bid.

“We continue to believe that our agreed transaction, which we plan to close in approximately six weeks, creates substantially greater value and provides far greater certainty for Sprint shareholders,” SoftBank Holdings president Ron Fisher said in a statement on Monday. “We are providing this waiver because we are confident in the value of our transaction, and to ensure that Sprint and Softbank can move quickly and with no risk of delay or confusion, towards implementing our detailed investment plans.”

SoftBank said it hopes the waiver will allow the Sprint directors to promptly evaluate Dish’s offer and to complete the SoftBank deal as scheduled by July 1.

While Sprint already owns 51 percent of Clearwire, the deal requires the approval of the majority of shares voted by Clearwire’s other owners.

And the biggest of those — Crest Financial — strongly opposes the deal and has been soliciting votes against it, arguing that Clearwire is worth way more than the $2.97 per share that Sprint has offered. According to a Reuters analysis, the current deal is unlikely to pass. Wall Street also seems to be betting on a higher bid, as Clearwire shares closed trading last week at $3.20.

Crest has also sued to block a Sprint deal, hiring noted law firm Quinn Emanuel to make its case.

Pass or not, though, Sprint itself is still the subject of competing offers. Its board approved a deal with SoftBank. And Dish countered with its own offer. Both sides say their offer is the better one.

Sprint shareholders are due to vote June 12 on the SoftBank deal, an offer that has the backing of Sprint’s board and management. However, a special committee of Sprint directors is considering whether Dish’s intent is likely to lead to a “superior offer.” If so, it could change its stance on the SoftBank deal.

So, basically it’s all clear as mud. We’ll see if things look any clearer after Tuesday’s vote than they do now.

Sprint agreed to buy the half of Clearwire it doesn’t already own for $2.2 billion, or $2.97 a share, but that offer has been opposed by numerous shareholders. Influential adviser Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. is backing Sprint’s bid, saying it falls within “an appropriate valuation range,” while adviser Glass Lewis & Co. holds the opposite view and contends that Sprint didn’t make a strong enough case for its offer.

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Which one that is depends, of course, on which company you ask: Dish Network or SoftBank, the two suitors for the No. 3 wireless carrier.

Each thinks it is and their rival is not, which is how contested deals always go — a back and forth of accusations and counter-charges that usually only result in muddying the waters.

Very muddy, in fact. Along with two strong-minded (and, more to the point, voluble) leaders — SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son and Dish’s Charlie Ergen — each side has an army of bankers, lawyers and other advisers willing to trot out a number of arguments for why its offer is superior and the myriad risks and downsides to the competitor’s bid.

And of course, the ultimate winner in this battle will have a huge impact on both Sprint itself and the overall level of competition in the U.S. wireless market.

So, for the benefit of the confused individual investors and consumers out there, we’ll try to boil down the points and counterpoints, as well as explain where things go from here.

SoftBank on Why Its Bid Is Better Than Dish’s:

Son made an hour-long, 11-point argument recently for why the Japanese investment and telecom giant’s bid is superior, but it basically boils down to three key points.

1) SoftBank is maintaining that Dish’s bid is actually not as good financially.

“It is incomplete and illusory,” Son said of the Dish bid, who insisted a deal by the satellite behemoth will take longer to complete and create a company swimming in debt. In contrast, Son pointed out that SoftBank is offering to put $8 billion into the company ($3.9 billion of this is already invested, so even if Dish were to prevail, SoftBank would be a significant Sprint shareholder.)

2) SoftBank promises it can get its deal done by July, while a Dish outcome could take well into next year to complete.

3) When it comes to managing things, SoftBank notes that instead of wireless experience, Dish brings only the baggage of its legacy business and a history of litigation with its partners.

SoftBank, as it touts itself, has experience running wireless companies and can offer improved scale to Sprint when it comes to buying network equipment and handsets.

“We are the world’s largest customer for many of these vendors,” Son said, emphasizing the buying power that Sprint would gain with companies such as Samsung, Ericsson and Apple. “Dish has zero expertise in our mobile industry.”

Dish, on Why Its Bid Is Better Than Softbank’s:

Dish’s main point is that its offer is just flat-out more money.

“It’s a higher financial offer,” Ergen said. “At Dish’s current stock price, our cash and the value of our shares … it’s about $7.10. The counter-offer from SoftBank is about $6.38. In fact, that’s not my words; that’s from Sprint’s own proxy.”

As for the fact its deal will take longer, Ergen says it won’t take as long as Sprint maintains and said the higher offer more than accounts for the delay.

But Ergen says Dish’s bid has several other advantages as well.

1) Dish brings a bunch of its own spectrum, representing airwaves that Sprint will inevitably need. By combining with Dish, Dish insists, Sprint will save itself from spending billions of dollars later.

2) The combined Dish/Sprint would be able to offer a combination of video, voice and data services. On the other hand, Sprint under SoftBank will have some additional capital, Dish says, but in essence be the same company that is today struggling to compete against larger rivals such as AT&T and Verizon.

3) While SoftBank is offering a bunch of cash up front, Dish said it will bring more ongoing value by virtue of various synergies, as well as the cash flow from Dish’s existing business.

“We’re bringing $20 billion of equity to the merger,” Ergen said. “I’m bringing $10 billion of equity personally. I’m taking my entire net worth and putting it into a Dish/Sprint transaction.”

Beyond the dollars-and-sense arguments, Ergen is attempting to wrap his deal in the flag, noting that his bid will create an American-owned company with Americans making the decisions, while SoftBank’s bid will put Sprint in foreign hands.

“Culturally we are much more aligned with Sprint today than probably a foreign company would be,” Ergen said. “A Japanese culture would be different than a U.S. culture. Our language is different; our culture is different. It doesn’t make their culture bad; they have a great culture. But it’s different.”

Subtle much?

Where things go from here:

Sprint is moving ahead to get all the regulatory and shareholder approvals that it needs with a goal of having the deal ready to close on July 1. A shareholder vote on SoftBank’s proposal is slated for June 12.

However, Sprint’s board has a duty to explore Dish’s bid, so it has formed a special committee to do that. That group of five independent directors — which has its own bankers and legal advisers — is in the early stages of evaluating Dish’s offer, having gotten permission from SoftBank to seek more information from the satellite company. Its job is to “provide its assessment to the full board in due course whether the proposal is, or is reasonably likely to lead to, a superior offer.”

But while Sprint is getting more information from Dish to understand its bid, information is not, at this point, flowing in the other direction. Sprint is not sharing any non-public info with Dish, meaning that Dish can’t yet undertake the due dilligence needed to make a formal bid and arrange financing.

For that to happen, Dish needs a determination from Sprint’s board committee that Dish’s interest could well lead to a superior offer. That would then pave the way for Sprint to crack open the books and Dish to make its offer.

Clearwire Muddies Things Further

A complicating factor in all this is Clearwire. Sprint already owns the majority of the wireless network operator and is seeking to buy the rest of the company to boost its spectrum position. Sprint’s bid, though, is contingent on the SoftBank deal going through.

Dish had also tried to buy Clearwire before it made its offer for Sprint. Clearwire, though, is moving forward to close its deal with Sprint, though a dissident shareholder is seeking to block the deal both through a lawsuit and proxy battle.

So where does this leave things?

For the moment, investors are betting that the existence of two interested parties will mean a higher offer from someone. Shares closed on Wednesday at $7.32, higher than either company’s current offer for the company.

Meanwhile, it’s business as usual for Sprint and its customers, with little near-term impact expected as the company continues playing catch-up with AT&T and Verizon in the race to cover America with a next-generation LTE network.

Crest, Clearwire’s largest minority shareholder, also said it has mailed its proxy as it seeks to defeat the deal in a vote of shareholders.

Crest argues that Clearwire’s board is breaching its duties in approving a deal to sell the company to Sprint, which already owns a controlling interest in Clearwire. Sprint has offered $2.97 per share, an amount that Crest maintains undervalues the company.

“Sprint owes fiduciary duties — duties of loyalty and trust — which require it to protect the interests of the company’s minority stockholders,” Quinn said in a statement. “But instead of acting consistent with those duties, Sprint is thumbing its nose at the other stockholders and seeking to force a sale of Clearwire at a grossly inadequate price. Clearwire directors are doing Sprint’s bidding.”

Quinn is known for representing a wide range of tech firms in litigation, including its recent role on behalf of Samsung in its patent trial against Apple.

Four other minority shareholders joined Crest last week in opposing the deal.

In addition to the proxy battle, Crest has sued Clearwire, its board and Sprint in Delaware court, the case for which it has hired Quinn.

“The battle for Clearwire has just begun,” Crest wrote in its proxy, which was declared effective by the Securities and Exchange Commission last week after being initially filed in April.

In December, Clearwire’s majority owner, Sprint, offered to buy the rest of Clearwire that it doesn’t own for $2.2 billion, or $2.97 a share. The next month, satellite TV company Dish Network Corp. bid $3.30 a share, and Clearwire shares have traded well above the Sprint offer since. Dish since has bid for the entirety of Sprint, putting its Clearwire bid in question.

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In December, Sprint offered to buy the rest of Clearwire in a $2.2 billion deal, and provided the wireless broadband operator up to $800 million in financing that it could draw on in installments of $80 million over 10 months. The company didn’t take that funding in January or February, as it was considering an offer from satellite TV company Dish Network Corp., DISH +2.03% but took the cash in March and April.

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FreedomPop plans to start offering the Overdrive Pro hotspot, which works on both WiMax and Sprint’s 3G network. FreedomPop plans to offer products on Sprint’s LTE network later in the year.

“The biggest criticism with our service to date has been the coverage gaps in certain parts of the country,” FreedomPop CEO Stephen Stokols said in a statement. “We’re planning on launching our full national LTE roll-out by the end of this year, but until then, adding nationwide 3G coverage gives users the ability to connect from anywhere.”

As with other FreedomPop plans, users get a certain amount of data free (in this case, 500 megabytes), and can pay a fee for additional data or other services. The device will sell for $40, or users can trade up from FreedomPop’s existing hotspot.

Pay-TV provider Dish Network Corp. has offered $25.5 billion for the mobile-phone carrier, in a headline-grabbing attempt to break up Sprint’s agreement to be bought by SoftBank Corp.

But Sprint is waging another battle over a separate, lower-profile effort to buy the roughly 50 percent stake it doesn’t own in wireless-broadband operator Clearwire Corp.

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The move would give the country’s largest wireless carrier the right to use airwaves currently controlled by Clearwire in big markets in the U.S. It also further complicates a three-way series of deals in which Clearwire had agreed to sell itself to part owner Sprint Nextel Corp. and Sprint agreed to sell a controlling stake in itself to Softbank of Japan.

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Crest Financial — Clearwire’s largest minority shareholder — last month hired proxy solicitation firm D.F. King to help in its opposition to the deal. Crest has also sued Clearwire and its board in Delaware, arguing they have breached their fiduciary duties, and asked the Federal Communications Commission to block the deal.

“The filing of Crest’s proxy statement is the next step in our ongoing effort to block Sprint’s unfair merger offer and we are optimistic that we can do so,” Crest General Counsel David Schumacher said in a statement. “We look forward to the SEC clearing our preliminary proxy statement so that we can begin educating Clearwire shareholders in earnest about the disadvantages of the Sprint offer and the alternative future for Clearwire and its valuable trove of wireless spectrum.”

According to Crest, Sprint’s $2.97-per-share offer significantly underestimates the value of Clearwire’s wireless spectrum and other assets.

“Crest is of the opinion that it would be better for Clearwire to remain a stand-alone company, while examining opportunities to consummate alternative transactions, rather than accept the merger consideration of $2.97 in cash per share being offered to Clearwire stockholders in the Proposed Sprint-Clearwire Merger,” it said in the proxy statement.

The full preliminary proxy statement is posted on D.F. King’s website.

The Houston-based investment company owns 3.9 percent of Clearwire and has already sued Clearwire and its directors, arguing that they have breached their fiduciary duties in accepting Sprint’s offer.

The deal still requires the approval of shareholders representing a majority of the shares not held by Sprint. In hiring proxy-solicitation firm D. F. King & Co., Crest is signaling its intent to extend its opposition into a full-on proxy fight. Crest also demanded that Clearwire make available its list of shareholders.

“Crest Financial believes that Clearwire’s shareholders will reject Sprint’s unfair offer for Clearwire,” Crest general counsel Dave Schumacher said in a statement. “Crest is determined to do whatever it can to stop Sprint’s efforts to extract for itself the value of Clearwire’s trove of wireless spectrum and to harm minority shareholders and the public interest.”

Satellite TV company Dish Network has made its own bid for Clearwire, which holds a significant amount of spectrum in addition to operating a wholesale wireless network.

In a regulatory filing with the commission, Sprint confirmed the meeting as well as details of its pitch for approval of the deal.

SoftBank has proposed acquiring a controlling interest in Sprint as well as enabling Sprint to acquire the rest of Clearwire — a move supported by Clearwire’s board but opposed by some Clearwire shareholders.

Clearwire CEO Erik Prusch also attended the March 14 meeting with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and other members of the commission.

The company is willing to pump more than $20 billion into Sprint, with more than $12 billion going to shareholders and $8 billion funneled into improving Sprint’s network.

During the meeting, Son explained what he had done in creating one of Japan’s largest wireless providers after entering as an upstart in 2006 by purchasing Vodafone’s Japanese wireless interests.

“Through innovative products, pricing, and marketing, SoftBank is now poised to become the second largest wireless provider in Japan,” Sprint said in the filing. “Mr. Son explained that through SoftBank’s investment in Sprint, he hopes to bring a similar competitive spark to the U.S. wireless marketplace.”

Dish has proposed buying Clearwire for $3.30 a share amid opposition among Clearwire shareholders to a deal in which Sprint would acquire the roughly half of Clearwire it doesn’t own for $2.97 a share.

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Crest Financial, which owns 8 percent of Clearwire’s Class A shares, says a study it commissioned from Information Age Economics confirms its position that Sprint’s offer of $2.97 per share undervalues the company.

Crest also argues in a regulatory filing with the Federal Communications Commission that the proposed deal runs contrary to the public interest, given the shortage of available spectrum.

“The merger would contradict the FCC’s stated mission to maximize spectrum availability for public consumption,” Crest said. “What’s more, it would place the country’s largest remaining spectrum portfolio in hands least equipped, by past example, to serve the best interests of the United States and its wireless consumers.”

In addition to its petitions to the FCC, Crest has sued to block the deal from going forward. Dish Network has made a rival bid for Clearwire, and asked regulators to hold off on their review of Sprint’s bid.

And if you missed the whole thing? Your loss!

But no worries: This week, we’ll start running complete videos of each of our onstage interviews and demos, so you can review them anytime you want. We’re kicking off today with Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen, who rarely speaks in public, but sat down with us for an hour.

We’re so glad he did, because he has got one of the most interesting perspectives on the way technology is reshaping the TV business — and the ways that the TV business is stubbornly and successfully resisting change.

Some of this stuff parallels thoughts you’ve heard from other people — but usually not those with this much skin in the game. Ergen is a billionaire with the third-largest pay-TV business in America. So getting this stuff right matters a whole lot to him.

There’s a lot of great stuff in here. Like:

• Ergen’s assessment of his odds as he tries to grab Clearwire’s spectrum out of Sprint’s clutches (low), and why he’s taking on CBS and every other broadcaster with his ad-skipping Hopper DVR (both for leverage and because his customers want it).
• His explanation of why he bought Blockbuster (real estate) and why he failed to challenge Netflix (too late, too timid).
• His take on cord-cutting, which you never hear pay-TV bosses say out loud. (Yep, it’s real. And cord-nevers — kids like his who don’t have pay TV and never had — are even real-er.)
• What he thought of the Bloomberg Businessweek piece that described Dish as “The Meanest Company in America,” and whether his company’s work culture will let it compete with the likes of Google and Facebook. (Dish is not going to be supplying private buses for its workers anytime soon).

And the nice thing is that you get to sample as much, or as little, as you like. Enjoy, and come back for more over the next few weeks:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130219/dish-networks-charlie-ergen-gets-real-the-full-dive-into-media-interview/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130211/dishs-ergen-says-wireless-network-needed-to-reach-customers-outside-the-home/ http://allthingsd.com/20130211/dishs-ergen-says-wireless-network-needed-to-reach-customers-outside-the-home/#comments Tue, 12 Feb 2013 03:07:22 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=293823 While it is best known for its position in the satellite business, Dish Networks has been building up wireless spectrum for quite awhile.

“First and foremost, we are a video company,” Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen said in an interview at D: Dive Into Media. But, Ergen said, once the company realized that the same network would deliver video, voice and data, it realized it might be in different businesses.

“Ideally, we’d build a network,” Ergen said, noting that all the current networks are still voice-centric. “Because we took so long to get our license, that is more difficult. That probably is outside of the grasp of reality. … It’s better to probably work with someone who is in the business.”

In addition to the wireless spectrum it already holds, Dish has made a $5.15 billion bid for a stake in Clearwire, which Sprint had earlier announced its intention to acquire.

Ergen said that Dish’s offer for Clearwire is not illusory, “but the deck is stacked against us,” he acknowledged. However, he insisted, his offer is better for shareholders.

“Ideally, we’d compete against the AT&Ts and Verizons,” he said. “To do that, we’d need more spectrum.”

The cable and phone companies are good at delivering video, voice and data inside the home, and the wireless companies do good outside the home. Ergen said his goal is to do well with both. “That’s why we think we need wireless spectrum.”

Ergen said the company’s intention has never been to sell the spectrum, but the Federal Communications Commission has created an opportunity to get billions if it chose to do so. “We don’t want to sell the spectrum.”

As for what it would do if it can’t buy Clearwire, Ergen said there is a Plan B, but declined to get specific.

Earlier in the interview, Ergen said his company needs to own wireless to deliver television outside the home.

“We want to compete against both the cable guys and the wireless guys, and we want to do it inside the house and outside the house, and that’s why we think we need wireless spectrum,” Ergen said. “We’d like to own a wireless network so we can give you a quality of service.”

The company said it didn’t know how to get into the wireless business, but felt like it needed to do it to serve its customers outside the home.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130211/dishs-ergen-says-wireless-network-needed-to-reach-customers-outside-the-home/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130207/freedompop-raises-a-few-more-millions-to-further-disrupt-mobile-broadband/ http://allthingsd.com/20130207/freedompop-raises-a-few-more-millions-to-further-disrupt-mobile-broadband/#comments Thu, 07 Feb 2013 14:00:30 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=292387 FreedomPop, the Niklas Zennstrom-backed mobile broadband company, is adding another $4.3 million to its coffers.

The funding will come from its existing investors, but at a higher valuation than its Series A round, CEO Stephen Stokols said in an interview. Since last year, FreedomPop has been selling various add-on sleeves, hotspots and data cards that customers can use to access free and low-cost mobile data plans.

More cash will help the company continue to come up with new plans and social features for its service. Already, the company plans to boost the amount of free data each customer gets for referring a friend to the service, and to add the ability for friends with more data on their plan to share with those running low.

“It takes family plans to a new level,” Stokols said.

In its initial products, FreedomPop has been using Clearwire’s WiMax network; later this year, the company will look to offer devices on Sprint’s LTE network, once it covers more places.

The company has run into challenges with one of its devices — the add-on sleeve that adds WiMax capabilities to an iPhone 4. That device is still awaiting FCC approval, months after it was originally scheduled to ship.

Stokols said that FreedomPop hopes to be able to ship the device in a few weeks’ time, but said the company is offering refunds to those who ordered the $99 device. FreedomPop hopes to also soon start shipping a home broadband product, announced in December, that offers low-cost Internet using a fixed WiMax modem.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130207/freedompop-raises-a-few-more-millions-to-further-disrupt-mobile-broadband/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130201/dishs-clearwire-offer-lives-on/ http://allthingsd.com/20130201/dishs-clearwire-offer-lives-on/#comments Fri, 01 Feb 2013 15:42:18 +0000 Spencer E. Ante and Anupreeta Das http://allthingsd.com/?p=290750 Clearwire Corp. kept alive its consideration of a merger proposal from satellite television operator Dish Network Corp., as a vocal group of shareholders continues to oppose the wireless broadband operator’s deal to be bought by Sprint Nextel Corp.

In a regulatory filing Friday, Clearwire said it opted not to tap financing made available by Sprint for February — a step that could have caused Dish to withdraw its proposal to buy Clearwire for $3.30 a share. Clearwire has agreed to sell itself to Sprint for $2.97 a share.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130201/dishs-clearwire-offer-lives-on/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130117/dish-asks-fcc-to-halt-sprint-softbank-review-clock/ http://allthingsd.com/20130117/dish-asks-fcc-to-halt-sprint-softbank-review-clock/#comments Thu, 17 Jan 2013 20:56:32 +0000 Thomas Gryta http://allthingsd.com/?p=286622 Dish Network Corp. has asked the Federal Communications Commission to halt the regulatory-review “shot clock” for Softbank Corp.’s plans to buy a 70 percent stake in Sprint Nextel Corp. for $20 billion.

In the filing, posted Thursday, Dish said many issues are unresolved in the acquisition review, which includes Sprint’s deal to buy the rest of majority-owned Clearwire Corp. Dish recently proposed a $3.30-a-share offer for Clearwire, above Sprint’s agreement to pay $2.97 a share, and says that uncertainty surrounding process could lead to major amendments to the Sprint/Softbank review.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130117/dish-asks-fcc-to-halt-sprint-softbank-review-clock/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130110/in-clearwire-gambit-spectrum-is-the-prize/ http://allthingsd.com/20130110/in-clearwire-gambit-spectrum-is-the-prize/#comments Thu, 10 Jan 2013 15:30:30 +0000 Anton Troianovski, Shalini Ramachandran and Anupreeta Das http://allthingsd.com/?p=284167 Charlie Ergen, chairman of Dish Network Corp., is in a familiar position: He can win even by losing.

Mr. Ergen’s attempt to snatch wireless provider Clearwire Corp. out of the hands of its current merger partner, Sprint Nextel Corp., is just his latest move in a long chess match. The endgame: to get access to the spectrum and network assets needed to deliver wireless service and even video over the air.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130110/in-clearwire-gambit-spectrum-is-the-prize/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130108/dish-network-makes-5-15-billion-offer-for-clearwire/ http://allthingsd.com/20130108/dish-network-makes-5-15-billion-offer-for-clearwire/#comments Tue, 08 Jan 2013 23:27:14 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=283608 Satellite TV player Dish Network has made an unsolicited offer to buy out Clearwire, the wireless broadband service that’s mostly owned by Sprint, for $3.30 a share, or about $5.15 billion.

Clearwire said the Dish offer amounts to only a preliminary indication of interest, and that while it intends to hold discussions with Dish, its ability to enter into strategic transactions is limited by its current relationship with Sprint.

Sprint, which is in the process of being bought out by the Japanese investment firm Softbank for about $20 billion, last month offered to buy out the remaining shares of Clearwire for $2.97 a share. That offer valued Clearwire at about $10 billion, including $5.5 billion worth of debt and spectrum lease obligations.

Sprint’s reaction to Dish’s offer has been to call it “illusory,” inferior to its own offer and “not viable” based on its existing commitments to Sprint.

It seems Charlie Ergen, the founder and chairman of Dish Network, will have a great deal to talk about at our D: Dive Into Media conference on Feb. 11-12 in Laguna Niguel, Calif.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130108/dish-network-makes-5-15-billion-offer-for-clearwire/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121217/sprint-in-deal-to-buy-rest-of-clearwire/ http://allthingsd.com/20121217/sprint-in-deal-to-buy-rest-of-clearwire/#comments Mon, 17 Dec 2012 16:26:44 +0000 Melodie Warner http://allthingsd.com/?p=278505 Sprint Nextel Corp. raised its offer to acquire the roughly 50 percent stake in Clearwire Corp. it doesn’t already own, agreeing to pay $2.97 a share.

Sprint’s move to consolidate Clearwire is seen as key to a strategy meant to disrupt the U.S. wireless market, which is dominated by Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc.

The proposal will take about $2.2 billion in cash to complete, Sprint said in a statement Monday. The latest deal values Clearwire at $10 billion, including $5.5 billion of debt and spectrum lease obligations. The prior offer was worth $2.90 a share.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121217/sprint-in-deal-to-buy-rest-of-clearwire/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121213/sprint-bids-for-rest-of-clearwire/ http://allthingsd.com/20121213/sprint-bids-for-rest-of-clearwire/#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2012 18:20:17 +0000 Thomas Gryta http://allthingsd.com/?p=277828 Sprint Nextel Corp. offered to acquire the 49% of Clearwire Corp. it doesn’t already own for $2.90 a share, confirming that the carrier is moving to consolidate a long-time partner that is key to its future strategy.

Clearwire shares immediately rose above the offer price Thursday, reinforcing expectations that any deal for the smaller wireless company will likely need to be higher. Although Sprint controls a majority of both Clearwire’s stock and board seats, any deal must be approved by a majority of non-Sprint directors and a majority of remaining shareholders.

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