Comcast recently hired Dave Williams as SVP, Wireless Technology Strategy. Previously, Williams was CTO of Telefonica O2 Europe (comprising integrated fixed/mobile businesses in the UK, Ireland, Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovakia) and before that he was VP, Strategic Planning at Cingular Wireless. In the past 18 months, Comcast has spent $1.3 billion to acquire…
The most interesting part of yesterday’s Wall Street Journal’s story about the Spint/Clearwire negotiations was the revelation that Sprint CEO Dan Hesse was “pressing” for a deal closing by CTIA. Who really cares about CTIA and do we really think that Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, who is facing his own investor pressure, will respond to…
Today’s Orlando Sentinel (click here for article) includes a comment (not a direct quote) from Meg Crofton, President of Walt Disney World resort indicating that “spring looks good,” with no commentary about the outlook for the resort beyond that. While Disney’s theme park business is certainly exposed to a weakening economy, we continue to believe…
Live entertainment business venue expansion? Sundance Channel acquisition? Buying Newsday? With going private no longer a viable option (given the debt markets and the building ownership of CVC’s top 5 holders), the Dolans are clearly on the hunt for deals. We thought it would be “amusing” to brainstorm the top 10 reasons why the Dolans…
The FCC has just announced results of the 700 MHz spectrum auction: CVC – Cablevision did not win any spectrum, the same result as in last year’s AWS auction. We view this as a modest positive for CVC, albeit we never took them seriously in the auction. We are more concerned with Cablevision going after…
News headlines today indicate that Qualcomm continues to lose in its efforts to lift a court imposed ban on making chips that Sprint apparently needs to offer QChat service but we caution investors from getting alarmed by this news as Sprint has already announced that its launch of QChat would be delayed and limited to…
The day after reporting strong Q4 results, China Mobile reported record net subscriber additions in February of 8 million new customers, 63% growth from the prior year. We believe China is in the middle of accelerating subscriber growth trends like the ones seen by America Movil in 2005. Yesterday, China Mobile reported Q4 EBITDA margins…
Despite Warner Music revenues and EBITDA declining in 2007 (with unspecified benefits from numerous acquisitions over the past year) and WMG’s stock price down 70% in the past year (while S&P was down only 4%), WMG’s Board of Directors has just approved a dramatic increase in the compensation paid to its #2 executive, Lyor Cohen,…
The Sundance Channel, according to multiple Pali sources, has been put up for sale over the past several weeks. The cable network currently has 26 mm subscribers (available to over 85 mm homes), with the channel a mix of premium (pay) cable and digital basic subscribers. We believe the network is seeking a valuation of…
Anatel, the Brazilian telecom regulator, released wireless market share data for February that reflected a very strong month from Telemar. Total industry net additions for February (previously reported) were 1.265 million, which increased 169% compared to the prior year and were nearly double our estimate. Vivo’s market share of net additions in February was 15.7% versus our…
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