Merrill Lynch analysts suggest that because of a strong euro and looming price wars, Deutsche Telekom might make a bid for beleaguered Sprint and add it to its T-Mobile USA unit. In theory it may seems like a wonderful idea. In reality, if this deal happens, then it is going to be worse than a Las Vegas wedding after a night-long binge! The combined company will operate four different kind of networks — iDen, CDMA, WiMAX and GSM. Did these analysts forget that the iDEN-CDMA integration has been one of the major reasons for Sprint-Nextel’s troubles?

If you thought eBay taking a hefty writedown for its mistake — I mean Skype was shocking — then Sprint’s Nextel deal writedown is going to leave you awed. Sprint Nextel reported a $29.5 billion loss, scratched its dividend and lost 683,000 customers. The company wrote down $29.7 billion of the $36 billion it paid for Nextel in 2005. Continue »