Sprint

Sprint has disclosed that they're in talks with Softbank, Japan’s third-largest mobile carrier, about Softbank potentially acquiring of a large stake in Sprint. In a statement this morning, Sprint announced that the talks primarily regard a “substantial investment” in Sprint by Softbank, and a potential transaction could change who controls Sprint. Such a move would give Softbank an instant national foothold in the United States, and help Sprint financially. They would not be the first internationl carrier to come to the U.S. either. Vodafone, the second-largest carrier in the world, owns a large stake in Verizon Wireless, and T-Mobile is famously owned by Deutsche Telekom.

One anonymous Sprint retailer is apparently refusing to sell iPhone 5 devices to customers unless they also buy a bundle of accessories to go with it. The sure, the bundles they were offering were 20% off, but the cheapest ones started at $84. Sprint commented on the issue and said that it's not corporate policy to do this kind of thing, though indirect retailers can do whatever they want. 

Yesterday after the Apple event, we received a tip saying the iPhone 5 wouldn't be able to do simultaneous voice and data over LTE, which mean Verizon and Sprint wouldn't be able to do voice and data at the same time at all, and AT&T and other GSM carriers would have to drop data down to HSPA in order to do it. It sounded strange to us, because almost every other LTE phone launched to date has been able to do simultaneous voice/data.

During today's iPhone 5 press event, they made a point of paying special attention to the new radio chip at use in the new smartphone. Like iPhones before it, the iPhone 5 uses a single chip to manage all of the various radios and bands it has to address in order to be used on networks around the globe. Problem is, throwing LTE into the mix makes things a little more complicated. LTE actually adds seven - yes, seven - new bands into the mix, nearly doubling the number of bands needed to be supported between the 4G standard, HSPA, GSM, and CDMA.