Eric flipped through the information Chris handed over and read it.

Compared with AT-T, a giant in the telecom industry with a market capitalization of more than 80 billion yuan and an annual profit of more than 4 billion yuan at this time, the other two large telecom companies Verizon and Sprint, which are trying to enter the mobile communications market, are far worse.

Verizon's predecessor was Bell Atlantic, which was dismembered from the original AT-T in the 1984 telecom monopoly case, after ten years of development and integration, Verizon's current market value is 23 billion, but Verizon has been in a sluggish state in recent years, and last year it lost $754 million.

In comparison, the market value of Sprint, which is not from Bell, is only $10.5 billion, but Sprint's operation is far better than Verizon's, with an annual profit of 880 million in 1994. In the process of bidding for the B segment license, the final wireless spectrum license is even more than the two major telecom giants AT-T and Verizon combined, and Sprint will bear as much as $1.5 billion in spectrum licensing fees, which alone is equivalent to the company's net profit for two years when Sprint has been operating well at present.

After reading the information, Eric almost understood why Chris just said that it was not impossible to pull Verizon and Sprint into the CDMA camp.

Although these two companies are giants in the U.S. telecommunications industry, they are far from being compared to the big brother AT-T.

Verizon has accumulated a huge debt of $8.9 billion due to several mergers and acquisitions in recent years. This is equivalent to 38% of the company's market capitalization. This is also the main reason why Verizon has lost money in recent years. The spectrum license auction has added about $600 million to its debt expenditure, and it is likely to have more than 50% debt in the next few years if it wants to complete the mobile communications network and successfully operate it.

Sprint's situation isn't all too good, and while it was doing very well, the company's expansion in the mobile space has been too large, with $1.5 billion in spectrum license spending and the huge amount of money needed to build a nationwide mobile network in the next few years, which could even put it on the path of Verizon's losing streak for a long time to come.

AT-T, which has deep pockets, can make the decision to choose GSM technology as the standard for its mobile communication network without considering the possibility that GSM will be obsolete by the more advanced third-generation communication technology in the future. But Verizon and Sprint, which are in a very tight financial situation. However, they need to carefully consider the cost factor of the technical standards they choose next in the process of building communication networks. Although CDMA technology has not been commercialized for the time being, many experimental evidence have proved that CDMA has great advantages over second-generation digital communication technologies such as GSM in terms of spectrum capacity and network construction cost.

Chris waited patiently for Eric to finish reading the material and said, " In addition to the CDMA itself, if Firefly shows interest in the telecom industry and publicly spends Qualcomm, it is very likely that Verizon and Sprint will lean towards CDMA, because as the debt burden of the two companies further expands, it will be much more difficult for them to obtain capital in the future, whether it is debt financing or equity financing, and Firefly has the huge amount of money they desperately want, even if we do not provide direct financial support to these two companies。 They will also be inclined to cooperate with Qualcomm, which has the strong power of Firefly as the backing. ”

Eric nodded, leaning back on the couch. His fingers rubbed lightly over the materials in his hand, but some other thoughts came to his mind.

No matter in any country, the telecommunications industry is in the monopoly of some giants, if it were not for the famous telecommunications anti-monopoly case in 1984, AT-T will definitely be the highest market value company in the United States until now, even if it was split up seven subsidiaries, AT-T, which has a market value of more than $80 billion, is still the top five corporate giants in the United States, and the market value of General Electric, which ranks first, is only more than $90 billion.

Although in the United States, the monopoly of AT-T does not occur with administrative support, and even if AT-T wants to expand further, it will be restricted by the anti-monopoly department of the federal government, but even after a large-scale split, the actual monopoly state of AT-T is difficult to be broken, because after more than 100 years of development, AT-T has a complete national fixed telephone communication network, which not only costs a lot of money, but also is not easy to build in three or five years, many emerging enterprises want to develop their own telecommunications business, most of the time even need to rent communication lines from AT-T, in this case, if the latecomers want to catch up or even surpass the AT-T, it is basically impossible.

However, with the advent of the new wave of technology, there are two important opportunities that have broken the industry pattern, the rise of the mobile communication industry and the network broadband industry. At present, these two industries are in their infancy, except for Eric, no one knows what kind of scale these two industries can develop into in the future, but Eric is very clear that twenty years later, any of the two major industries of mobile communications and network broadband will far surpass the fixed telephone business that AT-T relies on to maintain its monopoly at this time, and even before Eric's rebirth, many families have no longer installed fixed telephones, but mobile phones and broadband have gradually become a necessity in people's lives。

Although the recent auction of the C license has been delayed due to the absurd lawsuit for that reason, it indicates that there are still many industry barriers that latecomers want to enter the telecommunications industry. But these barriers are nothing to Eric, who already has a huge amount of capital in his hands, in some online game terms of later generations, he doesn't have to start from scratch like those novice village trumpets, but can spend money to buy a good high-level account to enjoy the game directly, and at this time, he has two good 'game accounts' in his hands.

Eric still knows some about the future development prospects of these two companies, Verizon and Sprint and AT-T will be the three giants of the U.S. telecommunications industry in the future, he guesses that the future situation should be caused by the three companies, especially Verizon and Sprint, who are now sparing no effort on mobile communications, and at this time, some other telecommunications companies in the United States that are equivalent to Verizon and Sprint, such as Southern Bell, Companies such as North Telecom should also be because they missed this important industrial change and were gradually eliminated by the market or swallowed up by other enterprises.

Moreover, because it takes a huge amount of money to pay for spectrum licensing and build a nationwide mobile communication network, now is also the best time to invest in these two companies, Eric knows that this should be the last moment, and it may be difficult to have another chance if you miss it, because of the arrival of the new wave of technology, when the Nasdaq index begins to soar wildly in the next few years, whether it is Verizon or Sprint, only a small number of shares need to be issued to the circulation market to raise enough development funds, so it is impossible to introduce major shareholders like Firefly to change the company's equity landscape, even, even if they are willingIn the case of the skyrocketing market value of the two companies, Firefly can't come up with enough funds.

Seeing that Eric suddenly fell into thought, Chris waited patiently for a while before asking, "Eric, what are you thinking?"

Eric came back to his senses, raised the information in his hand, and asked bluntly, "Chris, which of the two companies do you think is more acceptable to our investment, Verizon or Sprint?"

Chris raised his eyebrows, and was about to speak, when the intercom near the two of them rang a few times, Eric got up and pressed the call button casually, and the voice of the manor doorman came from inside: "Mr. Williams, Mr. Jacob, and Mr. Salmasi have arrived." (To be continued.) )