Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Verizon Wireless CEO 'not interested' in buying Sprint, won't waste time opposing T-Mobile / AT&T merger

Well, isn't this just something. It only took Sprint a matter of hours (on a Sunday evening, no less) to push out a detailed list of gripes concerning the proposed AT&T / T-Mobile USA tie-up, but Verizon Wireless won't even be wasting its time. According to an interview with Reuters ahead of CTIA, VZW CEO Daniel Mead confessed that his company wouldn't be lobbying the FCC or any other entity to stop the inevitable, noting that "anything can go through if you make enough concessions." That's a pretty bold quote in and of itself, but of course, this is coming from the man who made an awful lot of those so-called concessions in order to pick up Alltel a few years ago. Continuing on, he blasted out this gem: "We're not interested in Sprint. We don't need them." In other words, there's nary a chance in Hades that America's current largest wireless carrier will be making a bid to keep it that way by shelling out for The Now Network. Why? Quite simply, he'd rather focus on being the most profitable US carrier rather than the largest. Not exactly what you'd expect coming from Verizon Wireless' CEO, but hey -- if he's down for the competition, we're down with watching from the sidelines.