Sprint Nextel Considering Sale of Nextel Division and Assets

The Wall Street Journal has filed a preliminary report stating that sources close to the carrier have confirmed that Sprint is considering the sale of the Nextel division into a related spin-off company or a complete sale to outside investors.

The report also mentions Nextel co-founder Morgan O’ Brien is actively seeking outside investors through his Cyren Call company in order to completely purchase the Nextel assets of the struggling carrier in order to create a nationwide public safety network.  He has confirmed that the talks are in the preliminary stages and that nothing has been confirmed at this time.

This follows recent troubles with Sprint nearing a deadline to vacate blocks of spectrum currently used by the iDEN network as mandated by the FCC leading to a denial of a recent extension appeal filed in order for the carrier to finish out the transition of specific blocks to the federal government in order to avoid antitrust litigation.

What is also not known is if this will have any effect on XOHM deployment as the purchase of Nextel also included spectrum licenses in the 2.5GHz band previously owned by the former carrier and given to Sprint under specific terms to deploy a nationwide broadband network in order to avoid the aforementioned litigation.

Newly resurgent speculation has also spread that Deutsche Telekom (parent company of T-Mobile USA) is considering purchasing Sprint once again.  The German conglomerate is not without issues of its own and is also facing increased federal scrutiny for its purchase of VoiceStream Communications, the company that eventually became T-Mobile USA.