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The DOJ has voiced opposition to the AT&T/T-Mobile merger - Good news for Dan Hesse and Sprint.  I am not sure I agree with anaylsts that Sprint would have been permanently hobbled by an AT&T/T-Mobile merger.  My opposition to the merger was concerned about less competition and fewer choices for the consumer. 

I have always believed that Sprint had options.  One of those options has been a strategic merger with Comcast and then converting Comcast customers to Sprint and leveraging Comcast’s content.  I still believe a merger of the two would be excellent for both customer bases.  However, this type of restructuring requires time, work, and skill; which frankly I think Hesse could pull off.

Sprint is facing some immediate problems.  Those problems are free cash flow and debt-financing needs.  The carrier’s need to spend money on its network upgrade to 4G is not a problem it is a necessity.  As for the carrier’s profit margins suffering because of the subsidization of the iPhone; my response to analysts  - WELCOME to Wireless.  Handset subsidization has been around for two decades.  So what else is new?

Hesse needs to worry about staying ahead of the competition with some innovative and clever business alliances.

A few good things have occurred over the last couple of years.  Sprint has launched the push-to-talk feature in its existing CDMA network, which is a feature the carrier’s Nextel customers want.  This will enable Sprint to shut down the Nextel network.  Sprint is upgrading its network to 4G.  All of this results in 20,000 cell sites being shut down.  The upgrade will also result in a reduction of monies paid to Verizon for roaming where Sprint’s cell coverage has been poor.

The carrier is still using WiMAX and is building out LTE.  Sprint is relying on Clearwire for its WiMAX coverage.  None of this is bad.

Could Sprint acquire T-Mobile?  I guess that is possible.  I think such an acquisition could bring with it a multitude of huge integration problems.  However, given the way Wall Street works, the mere mention of such an acquisition occurring would actually bring dollars to Sprint in the form of investment dollars.  Such an acquisition would bring with it integration problems not as bad as the Nextel acquisition; however pretty darn close but for a short period of time.  Sprint’s movement into LTE would enable the company to better integrate the two carriers’ technologies.  So the pain of integration would be intense but brief.  By the way, integration has to occur at the management level and procedural level; Wall Street would have you think it is easy but it is not.

I think while the environment is right, Dan Hesse and his team need to think way outside the box and use this time to come up with a plan.