Reston, Virginia-based Sprint Nextel is looking to close the deal in the first quarter of next year, and will give it an extra 52,000 PCS mobile users. Sprint Nextel also agreed to pay $2m to acquire licenses for C Block wireless spectrum from an affiliate of Enterprise Communications.
Sprint Nextel Corp remained the third largest mobile provider in the US after the $36bn acquisition of Nextel Communications Inc by Sprint Corp. It has been purchasing affiliates recently as a consequence of this merger.
The problem has come about because Sprint used a number of affiliates across the US that sold a mobile phone service under the Sprint brand. The acquisition of Nextel threw up a number of legal challenges because Nextel offered service in parts of the country where Sprint had granted exclusive rights to some its own affiliates.
In July it paid $1.3bn for US Unwired because the affiliate had sued to block the Sprint-Nextel deal. In September it agreed to pay $219m and assume $208m of debt (or $427m in total) to acquire IWO Holdings Inc. It also agreed to pay $212.5m and assume $75m worth of debt ($287.5m in total) to acquire privately held Gulf Coast Wireless LP. Gulf Coast Wireless had also sued over the Sprint-Nextel deal.
In November it acquired its largest affiliate, Alamosa Holdings Inc, for approximately $4.3bn in cash, including the assumption of approximately $900m of net debt.
The next likely acquisition for Sprint Nextel will be Nextel Partners Inc, which has the right to demand that it be bought out.
Sprint Nextel still has six other affiliates remaining, and analysts estimate that Sprint could be forced to pay as much as $12bn in order to buy them.
