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Dish Network put the last nail in the coffin of its unsolicited bid for Sprint Nextel.
Earlier this week, the satellite TV provider said that it was dropping its effort to buy Sprint in order to focus on its acquisition of upstart wireless provider Clearwire. In a regulatory filing Friday, the company confirmed that it is walking away from its takeover efforts and said that it would redeem several senior notes because it no longer needed the funds for an acquisition.
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The filing comes just a day after Sprint raised its offer to Clearwire, outbidding Dish and securing new terms that analysts believe make it highly unlikely Dish would win out.
The Sprint and Clearwire deals were part of an ambitious plan by Dish founder Charlie Ergen to marry his own satellite-TV service with a wireless service. Sprint, however, already had a deal in place to be acquired by Japanese carrier SoftBank, and Clearwire and its valuable wireless spectrum played a crucial role in its plans.
Sprint has argued all along that Clearwire was best suited as a part of Sprint, since a vast majority of the company’s revenue comes from the nation’s No. 3 wireless carrier. Sprint uses Clearwire’s WiMax network for some of its service, although it has started to phase out WiMax in favor of its own LTE service. Sprint already owns half of Clearwire’s stock.
Dish’s attempt to buy Sprint, meanwhile, had a rough chance from the start, as SoftBank and Sprint had already done a lot of work together. It was clear Sprint preferred to go the SoftBank route, and had rejected Dish’s unsolicited bid after SoftBank sweetened its offer.
