Communications Industry: German owned T-Mobile to acquire Sprint Corp in $26 billion deal

Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Mobile US agreed on Sunday to buy out Sprint Corp for $26 billion (€21.4 billion).

If approved, the deal will combine the third and fourth largest US wireless carriers, bringing competition down to three major cellphone companies.

Some of the specifics of the deal include: 

• The two companies expect to complete their deal by the first half of 2019.
• Deutsche Telekom, which controls T-Mobile, will own 42 percent of the combined company, and will control the board, nominating nine of the 14 directors.
• The proposed all-stock deal values Sprint, owned by Japan's SoftBank Group Corp, at about $59 billion and the combined company at $146 billion, including debt.
• The transaction is at a fixed exchange ratio of 0.10256 T-Mobile shares for each Sprint share, or the equivalent of 9.75 Sprint shares for each T-Mobile US share. 

 
Read more; German owned T-Mobile to acquire Sprint Corp in $26 billion deal | News | DW | 29.04

Internet : USA - Web Site Will Shut Down to Protest Antipiracy Bills - by Jenna Wortham

With a Web-wide protest on Wednesday that includes a 24-hour shutdown of the English-language Wikipedia, the legislative battle over two Internet piracy bills has reached an extraordinary moment — a political coming of age for a relatively young and disorganized industry that has largely steered clear of lobbying and other political games in Washington.

The bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House and the Protect IP Act in the Senate, are backed by major media companies and are mostly intended to curtail the illegal downloading and streaming of TV shows and movies online. But the tech industry fears that, among other things, they will give media companies too much power to shut down sites that they say are abusing copyrights.'

The legislation has jolted technology leaders, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, who are not accustomed to having their free-wheeling online world come under attack.

One response is Wednesday’s protest, which will direct anyone visiting Google and many other Web sites to pages detailing the tech industry’s opposition to the bills. Wikipedia, run by a nonprofit organization, is going further than most sites by actually taking material offline — no doubt causing panic among countless students who have a paper due.

For more go to the New York Times