SoftBank’s plans for Sprint have not unfolded as CEO Masayoshi Son hoped.
Son initially believed a merger with competitor T-Mobile would serve the carrier, but was dismayed when U.S. antitrust regulators shot the idea down.
“I was thinking to myself: ‘I made one of the biggest mistakes in my life,’ which was the misjudgment of the U.S. regulatory environment,” said Son.
SoftBank closed its equity stake in Sprint just two years ago, and the company has already considered selling Sprint to Comcast in the U.S. or Altice in Europe, according to the Wall Street Journal. Son’s plan to sell Sprint went nowhere.
Son also considered writing off the acquisition as a total loss. Now, SoftBank is facing the costly prospect of improving Sprint’s network to entice back customers it has lost to rivals over the years.
Sprint plans to install tens of thousands of small cells to improve the density of its network around the country, but is burning cash at an alarming rate and may go broke by mid 2016 if it doesn’t reduce expenditures.
For legal reasons, SoftBank’s hands are tied; it cannot invest too much more money in Sprint’s turnaround. It is considering forming two stand-alone entities to help finance Sprint’s network and handset-leasing expenses to keep debt off Sprint’s balance sheet.
Son replaced Sprint CEO Dan Hesse a year ago with Marcelo Claure, who has made some progress in retaining customers, but the carrier still has a long way to go. It recently fell behind T-Mobile, which now stands as the country’s third-largest carrier, behind AT&T and Verizon.
Masayoshi Son and Claure hope the network densification plan and more consumer-friendly service plans will help put the carrier on a more positive track.
