While the rumored marriage of the two carriers would certainly result in a larger subscriber base, a more robust infrastructure and a nice combined swath of spectrum, there are other considerations that make the combination a bit dubious. And though chatter about a potential deal may have cheered some investors, it’s turning the stomachs of others.

To wit, Bernstein Research’s Craig Moffett’s take on a T-Mobile/Metro PCS merger, which begins with an exclamation that pretty much says it all:

“Oh my, what an ugly baby.”

Moffet’s opinion is that combining two wireless weaklings just leaves you with a bigger weakling, particularly if they rely on different network technologies, as T-Mobile and MetroPCS do. T-Mobile’s network is GSM. MetroPCS’s is CDMA. In other words, a combination of the two is not a solution to either company’s problems, at least until they meet on LTE.

“Both [companies] are spectrum constrained — this wouldn’t change that — and they rely on fundamentally different technology platforms, making a combination a logistical nightmare,” Moffet says. “It will be years before either is sufficiently transitioned to LTE to make a combination truly sensible. To be sure, there would potentially be some overlapping retail stores in MetroPCS market, there would naturally be some selling, general and administrative expenses savings, and there are perhaps some savings in LTE network deployment in MetroPCS markets. But none of these benefits would provide truly compelling justification.”

And that really does seem to be the case. Though, to be fair, the combination would give T-Mobile more customers, which it could really use, after having lost more than a half-million contract customers in the first quarter.

Still, it’s far from an ideal tie-up. Said R.W. Baird’s William Power, in a note that echoes Moffet’s: “A T-Mobile/PCS merger smells like a mess to us, and seems to speak to the challenges facing the industry, exacerbated by the government rejection of the T/T-Mobile deal, which might have created spectrum opportunities for the other operators.”

According to the European Commission’s decision on Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility, published Monday and first noted by Bloomberg, Motorola hit Apple up for a lot more than just royalties.

It wanted access to the company’s patents, as well, and not just Standards-Essential Patents (SEP).

Motorola wanted a license to all of them. And when Apple refused to grant it, the company sued.

From a footnote in the EC document:

According to Apple, Motorola Mobility has insisted that Apple cross-licenses its full non-SEP portfolio in exchange for Motorola Mobility’s SEPs. Apple also argues that its refusal to accede to this demand led Motorola Mobility to sue Apple in an attempt to exclude Apple’s products from the market.

If Apple’s statement to the EC is accurate, that’s an incredible demand on Motorola’s part: A cross-license to Apple’s full patent portfolio, which covers everything from desktop PCs and mobile devices to operating systems, displays, packaging and power supplies. And while it was almost certainly just negotiation posturing, it really does make a mockery of the “fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory” terms under which the industry-standard patents at issue here are supposed to be licensed.

Motorola and Apple both declined requests for comment.

Have you never heard of Starboard Value?

Me, either!

But the New York activist fund is readying to make a splash as soon as today, several sources said, if it follows through on the expected naming of an alternate board to challenge AOL.

Saturday is the official deadline to nominate directors to the board of AOL, also based in New York, which will have all eight up for reelection.

Sources said Starboard has talked to several Internet types, but that it has plans to put up a slate made up more of Wall Streeters to present at the company’s annual meeting later in the year.

In a filing last week, Starboard said it had been in discussions with AOL management about its concerns, so it is certainly possible the investor and the company could come to some agreement over board seats and strategic direction before it gets Yahoo-ugly.

That would make it a kind of an East Coast proxy battle version of what’s been going on over at Yahoo and its tussle with Third Point’s Daniel Loeb. He recently followed through on long-expressed unhappiness with the Silicon Valley Internet giant, and named a slate of directors — including well-known media exec Jeff Zucker — to replace current ones there.

The same kind of thing has been in the works at Starboard, which sent a letter in late December to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, saying his much-touted strategy around content was not a good one for investors.

Like Loeb at Yahoo, Starboard is one of AOL’s largest shareholders, with a stake of just over five percent.

The letter signaled an increasing impatience with the pace of Armstrong’s turnaround efforts, which are still in turnaround. Meanwhile, AOL’s stock has rebounded from last summer’s lows of near $10 a share.

The stock is up more than 22 percent this year, to $18.44. But that’s still down almost 20 percent from when AOL spun off from Time Warner and went public in late 2009.

The grumpy (and opportunistic) Starboard entered the picture late last year.

According to The Wall Street Journal:

“Starboard, which focuses mainly on small-cap companies, was spun off from Cowen Group Inc.’s Ramius Capital LLC in March. In October, the fund successfully waged a proxy fight against hair-salon chain owner Regis Corp. when three of its director nominees were elected to Regis’s board. AOL, which was spun off from Time Warner Inc. in 2009 after a failed merger, is its most high-profile target yet.”

One of the investment fund’s bugaboos is Patch, the local news network that AOL has sunk a lot of dough into. Also under fire is Armstrong’s content efforts and the pace of its display advertising sales, including the high-profile acquisition of the Huffington Post and TechCrunch.

I have emails into all the bigs at AOL and Starboard, so we’ll see who calls back first, if at all.

Turns out it cost CEO Randall Stephenson, as well — $2.08 million in bonuses.

In a new filing with the SEC, AT&T’s board called Stephenson out for the collapse of what would have been a $39 billion merger between the nation’s second-largest and fourth-largest mobile phone operators.

“Although costs incurred in large merger transactions (such as T-Mobile) are to be excluded in calculating final performance attainment, the Committee determined to include the T-Mobile transaction costs in determining payouts for all outstanding executive officer performance share awards, resulting in reduced final award payouts for performance shares with a 2009-2011 performance period,” the board explained in the filing.

And then it took the scalpel to Stephenson’s incentive pay, slashing his short-term bonus to approximately $1,260,000 — a 25 percent cut — and his stock award to about $820,000 — a 6 percent reduction.

End result: A nasty $2 million pay cut that helped drop Stephenson’s total compensation for the year to $22 million, a 19 percent decline from the $27.3 million he received in 2010.

It’s a graphic visualization that our social media editor Drake Martinet did for his beloved, Stacy Green, who is the VP of marketing and communications over at Mashable.

Drake asked Stacy to marry him last night and, because they are both such geeks, did this paean to their relationship that is just adorkable.

And we post it here, because ATD is not just about news — it’s about love, sweet love. Compared to our Apple coverage, it’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.

No, not just for some, but for everyone — Happy Valentine’s Day to all our readers.

(By the way, Stacy said yes.)

Enjoy:

The company’s stronger-than-expected core earnings come about a year after predecessor Motorola Inc. split its smartphone and set-top box businesses from its mobile and networks operations. Tech giant Google is now in the process of taking over Motorola Mobility after it made a roughly $12.5 billion bid for the smartphone maker and its extensive patent portfolio.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

It’s 2012 and it’s time for a brand news obsession for me besides the mishegas of Yahoo — and the winner is: Facebook’s upcoming IPO.

Thus, I shall endeavor to scoop all deets great and small about the social networking site’s moving on up to a deluxe public company in the Wall Street sky, which is expected in the spring of this year.

From bankers battling for purchase to who’s selling what to the delightful back and forth with regulators to Google’s lobbing the inevitable screaming meanies at its rival during Facebook’s quiet period, this is going to be a good one.

And CEO and Co-founder Mark Zuckerberg — and his hoodie — are back in the brightest of spotlights!

Speaking of the need for PR, one of the unsung but critical parts of any company’s public offering process is the hiring of an outside communications firm to handle the deluge of media, rumors and other breathless attention Facebook is sure to get.

It’s a highly specific job, given the reporters a company will be dealing with — in this case, sharp-elbowed Wall Street reporters — are usually different than the ones the Silicon Valley start-up has mostly dealt with (the geeks!).

And the expected winner of that thankless job is likely to go to the Brunswick Group, which describes itself as an “international corporate communications partnership that helps businesses and other organizations address critical communications challenges.”

In other words: Will be putting out the endless wildfires sure to rage around tech’s hottest IPO since Google.

Brunswick is among a small group of high-powered strategic communications firms that compete for such high-profile IPO jobs, as well as mergers and acquisitions and other corporate battling.

Others include Sard Verbinnen & Co. (it has worked for Groupon board and Alibaba Group); Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher (it has toiled for Hewlett-Packard) and Kekst and Company (now cat-wrangling the Yahoo drama).

It’s probably not a surprise that Brunswick won the deal, since it has worked with Facebook in the past, including on its controversial private offering with Goldman Sachs a year ago.

No surprise, everyone declined comment.

Thus, let the Hunger, oops, PR games begin!

While the carrier gets valuable spectrum, a roaming agreement and $3 billion in cash, the future of the No. 4 U.S. carrier is cloudier than ever, now that AT&T has called off its planned purchase.

T-Mobile has been operating as something of a lame duck since AT&T first proposed its $39 billion acquisition in March. Consumers, employees and potential partners have all been writing the carrier off, assuming that it would soon be swallowed up by its far-larger rival.

The abrupt turn of events will send T-Mobile and its parent company back to the drawing board, which will include soliciting new buyers, figuring out a strategy for its next-generation network and coming up with some inducements to avoid losing even more customers.

The blow of the breakup is only softened by the fact that the Bellevue, Wash.-based carrier will be handed a huge chunk of spending money to ride out the near-term bumps.

As T-Mobile looks to come up with Plan B, here are some potential options:

Spectrum sharing: As part of the breakup, AT&T has entered a mutually beneficial roaming agreement with Deutsche Telekom. Terms of the agreement have not yet been shared, but there could be some pretty compelling outcomes.

In Europe, it is common for carriers to share spectrum and even the cost of maintaining the network and towers. From the consumer’s perspective, it’s two different networks and two different brands. The carriers only end up competing on handset offerings, price and features — not coverage.

Another merger: T-Mobile will entertain any and all offers. Most recently, Dish said it was interested in partnering with T-Mobile if its merger with AT&T fell apart. Other candidates could include Sprint, or other companies from the media industry that are always sniffing around wireless, such as cable operators.

A bid from a company like Google or Microsoft would definitely make things interesting. While both are less likely candidates, they could use the network to push their agenda, including handsets and applications.

A total overhaul: The $4 billion breakup fee could give Deutsche Telekom the confidence to take another shot at the U.S. market. Probably not, but there’s always a chance. The company’s roots have been entrepreneurial and scrappy, but it’s been awhile since it has been able to make an impact on the market.

Worst-case scenario: Deutsche Telekom passes out the cash as a dividend to stockholders. It has always leaned on the U.S. as a moneymaker, and this could be no exception.

The 4G conundrum: Regardless, T-Mobile still does not have enough spectrum to update its network to the next generation. It may gain access to AT&T’s 4G network as part of the roaming agreement with AT&T, but both companies will arguably need more spectrum to keep up with demand.

The only two options will be to partner with Clearwire or LightSquared, or to wait until the next government auction. Both Clearwire and LightSquared are always in need of more cash, and have their difficulties. A deal with Clearwire would be additionally complicated by the fact that Sprint owns nearly half of the company.

AllThingsD’s Ina Fried contributed to this report.

In a statement Friday, AT&T said commissioners won’t be able to vote a proposal announced Tuesday from FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski that the $39 billion merger be sent before an administrative law judge. The carrier announced it had withdrawn its FCC application in the early hours of the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

The charge reflects $3 billion in cash and $1 billion worth of spectrum that AT&T will owe T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom if the deal fails to garner regulatory approval.

The companies also said they would withdraw their pending applications before the Federal Communications Commission seeking approval for the deal, though they intend to continue fighting for it.

“AT&T Inc. and Deutsche Telekom AG are continuing to pursue the sale of Deutsche Telekom’s U.S. wireless assets to AT&T and are taking this step to facilitate the consideration of all options at the FCC and to focus their continuing efforts on obtaining antitrust clearance for the transaction from the Department of Justice,” the companies said in a statement. “As soon as practical, AT&T Inc. and Deutsche Telekom AG intend to seek the necessary FCC approval.”

The FCC chairman earlier this week indicated he was seeking a hearing on the deal, which commission staff found will lessen competition and lead to fewer U.S. jobs.

AT&T is already facing a Department of Justice lawsuit seeking to block the $39 billion purchase.

“The intent going in is not to put ourselves for sale,” Yang said, speaking at AsiaD. “The intent is to look at all the options.”

And while selling the company as a whole is one option, Yang noted that the company is made up of three key parts — its core business, its stakes in Yahoo Japan (along with Softbank) and its share of Alibaba.

Asked what he would personally like to see happen with the company, Yang said his goal is just to see Yahoo reach its potential.

“There are many ways of creating that environment,” he said. “So far, we have not ruled out any possibilities.”

Yang acknowledged that Wall Street now looks at the company’s Asian stakes as a significant part of its market value. “They are looking at a core asset that they don’t know how to value.”

As for that core business, Yang insisted that the company remains a premier digital media company, despite its challenges.

“We ought to be growing, can be growing,” Yang said, insisting the company has a great brand and 700 million monthly users. “We really do believe there is a path for Yahoo that can be better and higher growth.”

At the same time, Yang noted the company is also looking for a new CEO, an effort being led by an independent committee of the board.

“As these things go there is no CEO until there is a CEO, but the process has started,” Yang said.

In search, Yang acknowledged that the Microsoft partnership has been bumpy for both sides.

“I would probably venture that the Microsoft folks would say the partnership hasn’t gone the way they wanted,” he said.

But Yang said he is hopeful it will yet reach its goals.

“I think Microsoft is a very, very important partner for us,” he said. “I think both sides recognize this is a partnership that has to work over time.”

Yang noted that Microsoft has a lot of good people working on search — many of whom he noted used to work at Yahoo.

“It takes trial and error,” he said. “It takes work.”

Longtime media and Internet exec Bob Pittman has been named CEO of radio broadcast and outdoor advertising giant Clear Channel, the company announced today.

Pittman — who has been chairman of Clear Channel’s media and entertainment platforms after making an investment in the company less than a year ago — will join the board of directors of CC Media Holdings, Clear Channel Communications and Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, as executive chairman.

Clear Channel’s holdings include a huge parcel of radio stations across the U.S., along with a number of digital properties and a big global outdoor advertising business.

Pittman — the former MTV wunderkind who started in radio at 15 years old as an announcer at a station in his native Mississippi — has not been in a top job like this one since he resigned from the then-AOL Time Warner as its COO in the midst of the botched merger mishegas almost a decade ago.

Since then, Pittman has been doing a range of things, including making canny investments in a variety of Internet start-ups such as Zynga and DailyCandy, and even in a high-end tequila company via the Pilot Group, a New York-based private investment firm.

He made his own investment in Clear Channel last year and has since upped his involvement, which resulted in the latest move to CEO.

“I swore I would never work like this again, but when something gets me this stimulated, I knew I wanted to get into it again,” said Pittman, in an interview with me yesterday. “I think this company has everything it needs to be a great media company in the new media landscape.”

That will include a range of new initiatives, including recent partnerships with Facebook and more.

“We want to move like an entrepreneur and have the assets of a big media company,” said Pittman. “I am an addict for this challenge.”

Here’s the official press release from Clear Channel:

BOB PITTMAN NAMED CEO OF CC MEDIA HOLDINGS

Appointment Underscores Clear Channel’s Evolution to a Fully Realized, Integrated Media, Digital and Entertainment Enterprise

Media Pioneer Will Oversee the Company’s Global Media Properties, including Broadcast, Digital and Mobile, Syndication, Media Representation and Outdoor

New York, NY — October 2, 2011 — CC Media Holdings, Inc. (OTCBB: CCMO), a leading global media, digital and entertainment company, announced today that Bob Pittman will become its Chief Executive Officer. Pittman joined Clear Channel in November 2010 as an investor and the company’s Chairman of Media and Entertainment Platforms. Pittman will join the Board of Directors of CC Media Holdings, Inc. and Clear Channel Communications, Inc.; in addition, he will join the Board of Directors of Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc., as its Executive Chairman. These appointments are effective immediately.

In his new role, Pittman will oversee the company’s businesses, which include:

Clear Channel Radio, which serves 150 cities through 850 owned radio stations and an additional 100 cities and 4,000 stations through its syndicated Premier Radio Networks products. Clear Channel Radio also includes:

* Clear Channel Digital, which develops and operates iHeartRadio, the free, industry-leading digitalradio product that combines access to all of Clear Channel’s live broadcast and digital-only radio stations as well as user-created Custom Stations. Clear Channel Digital also develops the companion digital products for each radio station brand, including strong social components;

* Media Services for the radio, media, digital, mobile and music industries, including Total Traffic Network, a groundbreaking programming and technology service delivering real-time traffic data to vehicles via in-car and portable navigation systems, broadcast media, wireless and Internet-based services; The Katz Media Group, the leading media representation firm in the US for radio and television stations; and RCS, which provides scheduling and broadcast software for radio, internet and television station in addition to research studies that aid the media and music businesses.

Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, which is one of the world’s largest outdoor advertising companies with close to one million displays in over 40 countries across five continents. Clear Channel Outdoor includes:

* Americas Outdoor Advertising, which owns or operates nearly 190,000 displays across the United States, Canada and Latin America including operations in 49 of the 50 largest markets in the United States. The Americas businessconsist of various types of displays that include billboards; street furniture; transit displays; the Clear Channel Airports division, which is the premier innovator of contemporary display concepts and currently operates more than 260 airport programs across the globe; mall displays; wallscapes; and spectaculars including Spectacolor, a market leader in spectacular sign displays, with displays located in New York’s Times Square. The Company has been a leader in the development and operation of digital displays and networks across many of its U.S. markets.

* International Outdoor Advertising operates across Asia, Australia and Europe with displays across nearly 30 countries. The International business consists of street furniture and transit displays, billboards, mall displays, wallscapes and spectaculars. Clear Channel International’s street furniture division operates over 3,500 municipal advertising contracts worldwide.

Pittman will also remain a member of Pilot Group, LLC, a New York-based private investment firm.

“On behalf of the Board of Directors, I want to express how delighted I am that Bob has accepted this position,” said Mark Mays, Chairman of Clear Channel Media Holdings. “He has been an invaluable contributor to Clear Channel Radio since last November, and he is the perfect person to take Clear Channel to the next level. I look forward to his leadership of our company.”

“Bob Pittman brings a long history as a brilliant innovator and brand builder — from his days as a very successful radio programmer, creator of MTV and CEO of MTV Networks to his work helping to drive the phenomenal growth of AOL and his successful investments in other digital, media and technology companies. He has already generated a renewed sense of confidence and direction not only at Clear Channel, but across the entire radio and media landscape,” said Scott Sperling, Co-President of THL Partners.

“I’m thrilled we were able recruit Bob into the CEO role at Clear Channel. He is the perfect fit to lead this incredibly powerful media platform. He embraces creativity, and has given employees the motivation and freedom to innovate, take risks and succeed,” said John Connaughton, Managing Director of Bain Capital. “He thinks big, is not afraid of change and is intensely focused on driving new businesses, expanding our creative talent and maximizing the full value of Clear Channel’s extraordinary assets, ideas and people.”

Pittman’s appointment comes on the heels of several industry-leading achievements by Clear Channel Radio this past year. In March, the company acquired digital music company Thumbplay for its state-of-the-art technologies as well as its technology and product teams. Last week, Clear Channel hosted the iHeartRadio Music Festival, the largest live concert event in radio history, which marked the official launch of the New iHeartRadio, which combines more than 850 of the nation’s most popular live broadcast and digital-only radio stations from 150 cities with user-created Custom Stations. iHeartRadio was one of the few highlighted new products at Facebook’s f8 conference on September 22nd, where it was recognized for its technology and cutting-edge social integration.

Additionally, Clear Channel has demonstrated its unique national promotional capabilities through significant relationships with record labels and social media leaders, and forging relationships with partners like Microsoft, Facebook, Zynga, Toyota and HP that reach further and deeper than advertising.

“Over the past year, I’ve had the unique opportunity to look at the Clear Channel people and assets up close and have found myself increasingly drawn to the company, to the point where the chance to get even more deeply involved has just become irresistible,” said Pittman. “I know first-hand that we have great people and the assets that allow them to do great things. We are so much more than just transmitters and broadcast towers — we leverage our local brands, personalities, strategic relationships and programming expertise to create unique experiences that forge real connections with consumers across our multiple platforms.”

Pittman continued, “I look forward to continuing to work closely with John Hogan and the Clear Channel Radio team to grow our company as we strengthen relationships with our consumers, advertisers, artists, labels and partners, nationally and locally — and I’m excited by the opportunity to work with Ron Cooper and William Eccleshare to help them make the most of our outdoor advertising potential by tapping into Clear Channel’s assets as a whole. I believe we have the technologies, the physical infrastructure, the content and, most importantly, the people to market to consumers better than any other media company in the world.”

Think about the federal government’s blocking of the $39 billion AT&T and T-Mobile merger and you might want to reread Google’s blog today, penned in reaction to the news that the Justice Department is making a second request for information about its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility.

“This is pretty routine,” wrote Google’s Motorola integration exec Dennis Woodside. “We’ve gotten these kind of requests before.”

Maybe Google has (and it has with other purchases) — but in actuality, only four percent of transactions got such a follow-up request from regulators.

To be fair, it is much more common in high-profile, big-money deals like this one, but it means a longer closing period and more uncertainty around the Android mobile ecosystem until it’s done.

Still, Google has good reason to be patient. Despite tough criticism and brutal lobbying, it won approval from Justice for its $700 million deal to buy flight data service ITA Software in April, after nine months of scrutiny and a number of conditions imposed.

And the search giant waited out an intense six-month Federal Trade Commission approval process last year for its $750 million acquisition of mobile advertising start-up AdMob. It had an even harder time with the FTC’s nod of its 2007 DoubleClick purchase for $3.1 billion.

One that it lost — an obvious bridge too far that I dubbed Yahoogle — was Google’s 2008 effort to meld a troubling partnership with Yahoo in search advertising.

So, we’ll see soon enough which way D.C. — which just had Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt up to the Senate for an antitrust hearing chit-chat — will go.

Until then, here’s Woodside’s whole blog:

An update on our Motorola acquisition

Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 5:30 PM ET

Posted by Dennis Woodside, SVP Google

Since we announced our plans to acquire Motorola Mobility, we’ve been excited about the positive reaction to the proposed deal — particularly from our partners who have told us that they’re enthusiastic about our defense of the Android ecosystem.

And as David Drummond said when we announced our plans in August, we’re confident that this deal will be approved. We believe very strongly this is a pro-competitive transaction that is good for Motorola Mobility, good for consumers, and good for our partners.

That said, we know that close scrutiny is part of the process and we’ve been talking to the U.S. Department of Justice over the past few weeks. Today we received what is called a “second request,” which means that the DOJ is asking for more information so that they can continue to review the deal. (This is pretty routine; we’ve gotten these kind of requests before.)

While this means we won’t be closing right away, we’re confident that the DOJ will conclude that the rapidly growing mobile ecosystem will remain highly competitive after this deal closes. We’ll be working closely and cooperatively with them as they continue their review.

The closely held companies value their combination at $1.5 billion and will together process $150 billion in global advertising spending each year, according to people familiar with the matter. Both companies declined to disclose their revenues.

DDS, of New York, and MediaBank, of Chicago, have competed against one another for years in the business of providing the advertising industry with software that lets ad agencies book advertising time across a range of media, ensure those ads appear, bill clients and pay the media platforms that host the ads.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Unlike many companies in the industry, Verizon has maintained a neutral posture on the deal. But on Wednesday, Mr. McAdam said “that match had to occur” and cautioned the government that if it chooses to block such mergers, it needs to come up with a clear plan for getting the industry the spectrum it needs to meet growing demand.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

A range of major players interested in acquiring all or a large piece of Yahoo have been prepping possible bids and have been in touch with the Internet giant’s board over the last several days.

While Yahoo has publicly said it was not for sale, according to numerous sources both inside and outside the company, it has been receptive to the interest and its Chairman Roy Bostock and Co-founder Jerry Yang have spoken to several.

Among the possible players: Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, which is working with private equity firm Silver Lake, in a deal that also might include Russia’s DST Global and Yahoo’s Japanese partner Masa Son; former News Corp. exec Peter Chernin, who is partnered with Providence Equity Partners; and the possibility that Yahoo’s Chinese partner, Alibaba Group, might consider entering the fray in what could be a reverse merger of sorts.

Also being rung up by some of the parties: Microsoft — Yahoo’s advertising and search partner — which is being seen as a possibly moneybags in any deal.

The movement among these investors is against a backdrop of increasing pressure for Yahoo’s board, after it fired CEO Carol Bartz last week. In the wake of the dramatic move, shareholders have upped criticism of Bostock and the board and have been looking hard for alternatives.

Today, that included hedge fund investor Daniel Loeb of Third Point, which has a 5.1 percent stake in Yahoo. In a filing this morning, he said he might increase that amount, and described a testy hour-long phone call he had earlier this week with Bostock that ended abruptly with a hang-up from Yahoo.

Sources said Loeb called Bostock a “fool,” among other not-so-nice names, on the call and asked for Yang’s help in dumping him.

This comes as exactly no surprise, given his previously strong letter in which Loeb called for Bostock’s ouster.

Loeb has been calling out Bostock — who is also on the boards of Morgan Stanley and Delta Airlines — for a series of gaffes at Yahoo since he became chairman in 2008 (he’s been on the board since 2003).

Those have included: Yahoo’s bungled effort to stave off a takeover by Microsoft several years ago; the too-long enthusiasm for Bartz, who was hired in early 2009 and fired last week; sitting unusually still as competitors such as Facebook, Google and more have out-innovated and outgrown Yahoo; and, of course, the falling knife of a stock, which has dropped precipitously since Bostock has been in charge of the board.

As Loeb wrote in a letter he sent to the company last week:

“It is time that certain members of this Board were held accountable for its past failures and their individual roles. Accordingly, we insist that Mr. Bostock, who championed Ms. Bartz’s hiring and led the charge against the Microsoft deal, promptly resign from the Board.”

Loeb is likely to add to that later today at a high-profile investor conference in New York, where the colorful but tough-talking investor is sure to add more logs to the fire.

But it not only him. Other major shareholders of Yahoo are also in touch with possible outside buyers, seeking a change at the long-troubled company, after its shares have remained in the doldrums, its attrition rate of employees has spiked and its product pipeline has slowed to drip.

This has all been taking place — of course — during one of tech biggest and most innovative booms, in which Yahoo competitors have grown strongly.

Enter Marc Andreessen, the well-known entrepreneur who has transformed himself into one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful venture capitalists.

He and his partner Ben Horowitz recently pulled off another similar deal — with Silver Lake — to take control of a then-troubled Skype. They later flipped it to Microsoft for a large return.

Sources familiar with the situation said the pair have become increasingly intrigued by the situation at Yahoo and believe that its assets and brand are still strong, despite its management turmoil in recent years.

One problem is the huge cost of almost any kind of takeover and also the complexity, given much of Yahoo’s $18.5 billion valuation is due to its Asian assets.

The sale of those shares, as well as the selling off of some of Yahoo’s less core properties, makes for a very complicated situation for anyone.

Said one person looking at the company: “It is one of the more massive hairballs around.”

That is a common sentiment among many of those looking at Yahoo, which has hired Allen & Co. to manage the process.

Also of worry is a bid that would include too many players. Yahoo has long been plagued by indecisiveness on the part of its execs and, mostly, its board.

But one thing all the possible buyers of Yahoo, as well as an increasing number of its shareholders, agree on: The Yahoo board needs a major shake-up.

As Loeb wrote last week, which many I interviewed also echoed:

“This letter details our principled demands for sweeping changes in both the Board of Directors (the “Board”) and Company leadership, and outlines the hidden value of Yahoo, which has been severely damaged — but not irreparably — by poor management and governance.”

One of my favorite things about any giant mess o’ acquisition is the opportunity to give it a really snarky nickname.

And this $12.5 billion Google bid for Motorola is just about the perfect storm for a new coinage.

So please take this survey early and often:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

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• Watch Google Android Kingpin — and Motorola Acquirer — Andy Rubin Unplugged (Video)
• Defense Spending: Google Arms Itself With Moto Patents
• Is Google’s Motorola Deal the Break That Windows Phone Needed?
• Should Google Keep Motorola’s Patents and Sell Off the Hardware Business?
• Motorola Could Get Google Closer to Your Living Room — If the Cable Guys Play Along
• U.S. Carriers Silent on Motoroogle, but France Telecom Gives It a Thumbs Up
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The U.S. wireless arm of Deutsche Telekom said its revenue for the June quarter was $5.05 billion, down from $5.16 billion in the prior quarter and $5.36 billion in the second quarter of 2010. Net income in the second quarter of 2011 was $212 million, up 57 percent sequentially, but down 48 percent from last year’s second quarter.

On the subscriber front, T-Mobile said it lost 50,000 overall customers, as a drop of 281,000 contract customers was partially offset by gains in the prepaid segment. The average monthly revenue per customer was $46, about where it has been the last few quarters, but down $1 per month from the second quarter of last year, as prepaid customers make up an increasing percentage of the comapny’s business.

“The United States remains a difficult market for Deutsche Telekom, but we see improvements compared to the first quarter of 2011,” Deutsche Telekom CEO René Obermann said in a statement, adding that the company plans to stick with its current strategy.

The company also noted $13 million in expenses related to the pending AT&T deal, which it hopes will close early next year, despite opposition from Sprint and others.

However, this morning I stumbled upon some videos on YouTube done by Free Press, a consumer group that opposes the proposed $39 billion AT&T-T-Mobile deal. The videos are parodies of T-Mobile’s recent ad campaign, which was itself a parody of Apple’s Mac vs. PC ads.

There are several of the videos. And while the attacks are familiar — warnings that the deal will lead to job cuts and higher prices — at least the medium is inventive.

For those who prefer lots of text over a quick chuckle, AT&T has also made a revised filing with the FCC arguing the benefits of the deal and Sprint has issued its response.

“AT&T’s ‘do-over’ submission is a last-ditch attempt to distract regulators, politicians and consumers from the fact that it has failed to provide any evidence that its proposed takeover of T-Mobile yields meaningful benefits,” Sprint Senior VP Vonya McCann said in a statement. “Its latest model, clearly constructed with predetermined results in mind, does nothing to change the negative consequences of the takeover for consumers in the form of higher prices, reduced innovation and decreased investment.”

As for me, I’d go with the videos.

“I have concluded that this acquisition, if permitted to proceed, would likely cause substantial harm to competition and consumers, would be contrary to antitrust law and not in the public interest, and therefore should be blocked by your agencies,” U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl (D., Wis.), said in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

Sen. Kohl, who heads a Senate subcommittee that examines antitrust issues, held a hearing on the proposed merger in May. Executives for AT&T and T-Mobile appeared before the subcommittee and defended the deal as good for consumers.

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Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Lolapps’ CEO Arjun Sethi tells us its close to being a merger of equals.

Together, the two companies will have about 35 million active users a month and 120 employees in San Francisco, Japan, Hong Kong, and the U.K.

And now, with the help of 6waves, the combined company will not just build its own social games internally, but also publish third-party games looking for an international audience.

Other companies, such as Electronic Arts, publish third-party social games, as compared to Zynga, which develops everything internally.

The merger is Lolapp’s second recent move to build out its depth of capabilities. Known for its Ravenwood Fair game, which has been a top-performing game on Facebook, Lolapps acquired the Fliso Engine two weeks ago. The engine provides some behind-the-scenes technology that many developers license for running Flash games.

The combined company will be able to provide that platform to third-party developers.

“The coming together of two of the social gaming industry’s leaders made a lot of sense given our complementary strengths and aligned vision,”  Sethi said.

Following today’s deal, the combined company will be branded as 6waves Lolapps. The two companies, which have both been profitable, were independently speaking to investors, and expect to raise more funding in the coming months.

To date, Lolapps has raised $4 million in capital, and 6waves has raised $17 million.

Rex Ng, the CEO of 6waves, will serve as the new CEO, and Sethi will report to him.

The new six-member executive team will include three members of 6waves, including Ng, and three members of Lolapps, including Sethi.

Leap warned the acquisition would harm consumers as the reduced competition would result in two massive super-carriers–AT&T and Verizon Wireless–who would control more than 80 percent of the wireless market.

Sprint Nextel Corp., the No. 3 U.S. carrier, has been the most vocal opponent of the merger and has called on regulators to block it. Last week, MetroPCS Communications Inc., which like Leap provides prepaid cellphone service, also said the combination represents too high a concentration of wireless spectrum.

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The paperwork is the first step in gaining regulatory approval for the proposed $39 billion acquisition. The Department of Justice also must approve the deal.

AT&T’s filing includes both the transfer application and supporting documents making the company’s now-familiar arguments that the deal will improve access to next-generation networks and make better use of limited spectrum. AT&T has said it is posting a redacted version of the filing on its merger Web site.

“The bottom line is that our merger with T-Mobile USA will offer significant benefits to American consumers,” AT&T said in a blog posting. “It will address capacity constraints that both of our companies face, which will enable the combined company to provide improved services in the many urban, suburban, and rural markets where the enormous surge in broadband usage is fast consuming available capacity. What this means is fewer dropped calls, fewer failed call attempts, and better data throughput.”

Sprint is opposing the deal and CEO Dan Hesse has promised to fight hard to get the deal blocked. The New York attorney general and Congress have also said they plan to scrutinize the deal closely.

Non-profit group Free Press also lashed out at the deal in a statement on Thursday.

“No matter how many high-priced lobbying firms AT&T hires, it won’t be able to fool Americans into thinking the reconstitution of the Ma Bell monopoly is a good thing,” Free Press Research Director S. Derek Turner said in a statement. “Make no mistake, this deal is about eliminating a competitor and nothing more. AT&T has chosen the marketing slogan ‘Mobilize Everything’ to sell this competition-killing deal, but it’s clear their real goal is to ‘Monopolize Everything.’”

Lots of folks stand to be hurt by the deal, Hesse said, from network suppliers to handset makers and from app developers to those that write operating systems. “The entire ecosystem (is threatened),” Hesse said, speaking to Mobilized and other reporters on Friday, following his speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.

That said, Hesse said he is not sure who will join him in speaking out against the $39 billion transaction.

“There’s clearly a risk that a lot of these companies see in coming forward to oppose a deal that is so favored by a very, very large company.”

Hesse just might have a point there. I mean, what would argue that a deal is anticompetitive better than the fact that those most affected are afraid to speak out against it?

The challenge, though, is that silence alone won’t block the deal.

One of the interesting question in the weeks ahead is who, if anyone, will come out publicly against the deal.

Hesse said he is confident that he won’t be standing totally alone.

“I think there will be a number of companies that will oppose it, but clearly there will be companies that will be concerned about opposing it because of the ramifications for their business,” Hesse said.

As for the deal’s prospects of going through, Hesse said it is too soon to say, but he said he is encouraged by the fact that so many parties are taking an interest. In addition to the FCC and Department of Justice (both of whom must approve the deal), Congress has said it will hold hearings, while the New York Attorney General has also pledged a thorough review.

And not that this is a shocker, but Hesse has said he plans to testify against the deal. I’m more curious who will be in the chair next to him. Also interesting to see will be which–if any–of those that Hesse listed as potentially threatened by the deal, AT&T might convince to argue in favor of it.

Analysts at Bernstein Research are offering a different take. They argue that passage of the deal may well lead to less competition and higher prices. However, they say that’s not such a bad thing.

The firm notes that American wireless firms have lower profit margins than their European counterparts and that consumers here consume twice to three times as much data, but pay only half or a third as much per megabyte for that data.

“Given the economies of scale of wireless, the constraints of CEOs and historic decisions with regard to spectrum, only further consolidation of the U.S. market is likely to deliver better infrastructure and lower prices,” Bernstein said in a report. “In short, more wireless competition may (though there is no guarantee of this) deliver lower prices near term, but it will almost certainly deliver lower quality infrastructure.”

The surest path to higher quality, the firm reasons, is consolidation.

“If U.S. regulators want to redress the lamentably lousy wireless service Americans receive, one of two things must happen: U.S. operators must be able to reduce their cost to serve (probably through consolidation) or Americans must pay more per unit consumed,” Bernstein’s analysts say in the report. “If the ‘Just Say No crowd’ gets their way, they may well end up with cheaper telephony near term (although this is far from certain), but they will certainly receive a poorer wireless service.”

It’s an interesting argument, though probably not the one we will hear from AT&T as it lobbies for government approval of the deal. Both the Federal Communications Commission and Department of Justice have to sign off on the transaction, while several state attorneys general have said they are looking into the matter. Sprint has also vowed to fight the deal.