Jewish & World News

The pay-TV operator Dish Network said on Monday that it had submitted a $25.5 billion bid for Sprint Nextel. The move is an attempt to scupper the planned takeover of Sprint Nextel by the Japanese telecommunications company SoftBank, which agreed in October to acquire a 70 percent stake in the American cellphone operator in a complex deal worth about $20 billion.

Sprint says it sold 1.8 million iPhones between October and December 2011, of which roughly 720,000 were new customers, but the cost of subsidizing Apple's smartphone raised the company's losses to $1.3 billion (43 cents a share), compared with $929 million (31 cents a share) year-on-year. The losses after excluding one-time costs were 35 cents a share -- lower than the 38 cents analysts had forecast. The reason for the narrower figure: The number of new iPhone users was lower than Sprint expected, mitigating short-term losses, but still probably the less desirable evil. Rival AT&T, which has been selling the iPhone longer than anyone in the U.S., sold 7.6 million iPhones during the period, while Verizon Wireless sold 4.3 million.

Sprint Nextel Corp. plans to add a $10 fee on top of its smartphone data-service plans later this month to offset rising costs from increased wireless traffic on its network. Sprint already charges a $10 "premium data" fee for its 4G smartphones, the Evo 4G and the Epic, but on Jan. 30 will expand the fee to all of its smartphones. Customers on existing contracts aren't affected.