Sprint Nextel may decide to buy former affiliate iPCS this year i...
Sprint Nextel may decide to buy former affiliate iPCS this year if its appeal of an Illinois court decision doesn’t go its way, a Jeffries analyst said Friday. Sprint and iPCS are locked in litigation about whether Sprint violated…
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its affiliate agreement with iPCS when it merged with Nextel. Sprint had agreed to make iPCS its exclusive wireless provider in its territory, but the Nextel merger put a competitor in iPCS’s market. Sprint said the exclusivity agreement involved only the 1.9 GHz spectrum. Nextel uses 800 MHz. The affiliate took the case to the Cook County Illinois Circuit Court, which ruled in favor of iPCS because the spirit of the agreement gave iPCS complete wireless exclusivity. Sprint appealed the decision, which goes to court in the third quarter. The affiliate has legal standing in Illinois, and should have the stronger argument, said Jeffries’ Jonathan Schildkraut. If the decision looks like it won’t be resolved this year, Sprint will likely buy iPCS, he said. It’s not clear why Sprint already done that, he added, since IPCS is performing well and has much growth opportunity in 2008. And Sprint just completed an acquisition of Northern PCS, another former affiliate (CD Aug 3 p9). “Why would Sprint buy every other affiliate and not this one?” he said, adding that Sprint had already bought up much larger affiliates. “It might be the Nextel guys” who want to keep the fight alive, he added. Sprint didn’t comment.