DISH recently announced a planned acquisition of Sprint. Dish is currently one of two major satellite TV providers in the US (the other being DirecTV), and Sprint is the third largest mobile phone and data service in the US, and only one of two CDMA providers (the other being Verizon). Sprint was in the process of being acquired by Softbank, a Japanese telecomm company. Now DISH's offer could start a bidding war.
It was just a few weeks ago that DISH had revealed it intended to purchase T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom. T-Mobile, instead, announced a merger with MetroPCS, a growing cell phone provider, but announced that they would remain open to an acquisition by DISH after the MetroPCS deal went through. Not willing to wait, DISH seems to be signaling with this announcement that they are very eager to get into the telecomm business, and are unwilling to wait even a little bit. It would lead one to believe that they have big plans for such an acquisition. It will be interesting to see how they go forward with the integration of the two services. AT&T and Verizon, two of Sprint's competitors, both offer TV service, but those two fledgling services were started by the companies themselves. Sprint is a fully-realized telecomm company, and DISH is a fully-realized TV provider. A merger of this kind, if it goes through, would essentially be unprecedented.
Overall, this marks a growing trend amongst companies to provide an all-in-one service. Verizon began with cell-phone service, but now offers TV, internet, and home phone service. AT&T began as a home phone service, but expanded into providing TV, cell phones, and internet. Cable companies began providing internet, and some have merged with content-providers, like NBC-Universal's merger with Comcast. As I mentioned previously in another post, numerous tech companies are trying to find a way into the ISP and TV business, most notably Google Fiber's new service. It all points to a consolidation of these services under one roof.
In the near future, we might get all our media and interconnectivity from one provider. If a single company can give us home phone and internet, mobile phone and internet, as well as TV/content, and all at the right price, there is little incentive to go elsewhere.
As far as this week's topic, I'm familiar with a lot of online learning services, like Khan Academy, EDX, UDACITY, CourseRA, etc... MOOCs (massive open online courses) are getting a lot of attention lately, specifically because major universities are beginning to use them (San Jose State, Stanford, and Berkeley are currently using some form of MOOC). It certainly brings into question the cost of tuition, as well as the efficacy of the traditional teaching model.
Links:
BI - Dish & Sprint
No comments:
Post a Comment