#speculation

Oracle stock blasting off makes no sense. Yeah, the $455B RPO number is huge, but at the end of the day those are just cloud contracts. You know the cost of servers, you know the markup — margins are fixed. A bump was fair once the number went public, but “to the moon” is pure hype.

And really, is OCI suddenly the backbone of AI forever? Training demand might look endless on paper, but inference is a different beast. Betting everything on infinite training cycles feels a lot like Sun Microsystems right before the dot-com bubble popped.

Conspiracy theory: it almost makes more sense if Oracle’s endgame is to split in two — legacy gets run as a lean cash cow, while shiny OCI+AI is set free to chase a PE ratio as inflated as Larry Ellison’s net worth. If someone scoops up the legacy side, they’d basically crown themselves undisputed king of enterprise software overnight.

Heard Mike is considering a 4 day (10 hours a day) work week. True?

There are rumors based on things Shankar said that KKR will be selling part of OMNISSA. Could be an interesting next several months. I for one would welcome any opportunity to get out from under this leadership and KKR, both who have proven they have no idea what they are doing

EchoStar's loser Chairman Charlie Ergen was forced to give up pursuing his dream of establishing Boost Mobile as the 4th U.S. facilities based competitor due to horrendous Marketing and a lack of funds due to Dish Network flaming out. Couldn't happen to a nicer and more deserving guy as Charlie's brought a lot of hardship into others lives over the years!

Things go from bad to worse as Boost Mobile reduces its head count

500 Boost network employees get sacked as the company loses the opportunity to be one of the "Big 4" U.S. carriers.

Sep 03, 2025, 6:37 PM

Lately, things have been going bad fir EchoStar. After it purchased Dish Network on the last day of 2023, EchoStar-owned Boost Mobile was supposed to be working on replacing Sprint as the fourth facilities based wireless carrier replacing Sprint. The latter had been gobbled up by T-Mobile in 2020 leaving only three major U.S. carriers and both the FCC and DOJ frowned on the reduced competition.
FCC has been accusing EchoStar of being a spectrum speculator

The FCC and Chairman Brendan Carr have been pushing EchoStar, accusing the company of hoarding its spectrum holdings, hoping to sell the licenses for big profits. This constant pressure from Carr led EchoStar to sell 50MHz of spectrum to AT&T for $23 billion. AT&T acquired 20MHz of 600MHz low-band airwaves that will be used by AT&T for its nationwide 5G service called AT&T 5G. The 30MHz of 3.45GHz mid-band spectrum acquired by AT&T will be used for AT&T's faster AT&T 5G+ service.

A Dish Wireless storefront.
Dish Wireless became Boost Mobile last year. | Image credit-Dish Network

Without the spectrum it sold, EchoStar's hope of having its Boost Mobile brand join Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T as the Big Four in the U.S. went up in smoke. It's not as though Boost Mobile has been thriving. The number of subscriber declined form the 9 million Boost had at the time it was purchased by Dish Network. Currently, Boost is believed to have 7.4 million customers, a 17.8% decline.

After losing its spectrum, Boost will become a hybrid MNO, or a hybrid Mobile Network Operator. Boost subscribers will use AT&T's network primarily although they also will have access to the T-Mobile network. AT&T will provide the base stations, radios, radio access network (RAN) software and spectrum frequencies. EchoStar will handle the billing, deliver the network core, and and provisioning software.

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Today, the story got uglier as EchoStar let go 500 employees who were working in the company's U.S. wireless network deployment and engineering groups. EchoStar's wireless network was originally known as Dish Wireless and became Boost Mobile after a rebranding last year. In a statement, EchoStar confirms that pressure from the FCC led to the decision to sell its spectrum to AT&T. It still has 76 MHz of airwaves to sell and there is speculation that Verizon, T-Mobile and SpaceX are interested.
EchoStar hopes to retire some debt with some of the proceeds of its spectrum sale

EchoStar revealed its motives for the reduction in head count. "Due to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) actions, the recent announcement of EchoStar selling spectrum licenses to AT&T significantly impacts the company’s 5G wireless network deployment unit. With elements of our network to be decommissioned over time, the company will eventually not house a wireless network deployment workforce. After thorough review of our business operations moving forward, we have made the difficult decision to reduce our network deployment workforce. The majority of impacted employees were notified on Thursday, August 28."

Will Boost Mobile make it as an MNO?
Yes. It still has a well-known name.
24.79%
No. It won't succeed not being a Big 4 carrier.
53.31%
It's too early to tell.
21.9%
Votes 242

EchoStar President and CEO Hamid Akhavan said that the deal with AT&T will allow EchoStar to retire some debt and help fund its current businesses. It will, as noted, be a hybrid mobile network operator and a direct-to-device (D2D) satellite service provider. The executive alsio said on LinkedIn last week, "This is an important step toward resolving the FCC’s recent inquiries and demonstrates our commitment to continued innovation and success."

Because Boost Mobile will continue to exist, just not as a fourth facilities-based carrier, the spectrum sell-off impacts the retail part of the company a lot less than the network part of the business. The EchoStar spokesperson reiterated that there are no changes to the Boost Mobile brand. This is unfortunate for Boost Mobile because many blamed Boost's struggles on its failure to promote the company and its services. Meanwhile, Boost customers praised the quality of the network which is now dismantled.

he have limited customers. Also people are dying from old age. this means less phone lines. We don't even use the internet often anymore. we go outside and go to work. So we will have so much fun to come. The beginning of the end.

I’ve heard that an Infosys team is working in parallel with current employees in certain areas, with the possibility of eventually replacing them. Has anyone else heard about this?

There was no restart needed and no advanced warning of a download to be done as usual so that I could schedule it for another time. Got 2 inconsistent on my review last week. Is this a sign that I get let go tomorrow?

Anyone know when the next round of layoffs will be and what dept they are going to target next?

Layoffs? Realignment? Other info of relevance?

It was a long shot. They won F47, but winning both programs won’t happen. It’s too much risk for the DOD on a company that’s historically been late and over budget on most of the programs. The number of so-called analyst though who claimed Boeing has a good shot, I think it’s very misleading.

Selling off all their nursing homes left and right. I wonder if Gemini made them do it!!

I’m now absolutely petrified that La-Z-Boy might start looking at layoffs just to appease the shareholders. The stock drop has me on edge, and I can’t stop thinking about what this could mean for all of us. Does anybody here have more insight into what’s really going on or what we might expect in the coming weeks?

Offshore, firings, opening an office in India. The Citi playbook. DC acquiring EDJ is the only thing that makes sense. Nothing else does.

I keep hearing that 1000-1200 associates are going to receive the ISP. This would be a substantially higher number than what have been discussed related to Reimagined. Is anyone else hearing similar rumblings?

they are offering OT for snp CM. Does this mean we may be safe from layoffs? Thoughts? I

Round table w director after Q4 business update. Few months in advance so what could this mean?

Heard rumors of a big RIF coming soon. Any confirmations on which locations? Which division?

I know folks are very cynical of IBM’s actions and trust me been there done that (class of 2016) BUT the real question is was there a game plan to it vs just reducing costs across the board. In My 2016 experience it was just a cost reduction exercise, and no change of course. This RA seems to have a Slight strategy behind it (mostly eliminating Redhat vs IBM legacy overlap, which most likely should be expected after spending 34 billion.. The decimation of Power in Austin was not a “move folks from high cost to low cost”, but rather a “we don’t want to be in this business anymore” action. The final question is did IBM fall back on their old ways when it comes to GBS/GTS and just remove costs, or did they strategically go after costs. There is evidence for both. IBM had RA’s in China and India (China ended in April, while India had them when the USA had theirs). (see EE times articles). The non-confirmed posting of TSS moving to Costa Rica would certainly be the “old” IBM strategy of shopping for lower cost. Thus again I ask does anyone see a strategy via the man behind the curtain?
I will add one interesting tidbit. If we run the known numbers we get, IBM took a 900 million dollar charge in 1st Q, which equates to a 23k Headcount reduction at 45k a head. (USA fully burdened cost of 180k per head). The CFO said he was looking for 2 billion in savings which says 1.1 billion must still be accounted for. He also said the 1.1 would be self funding from operations. If we use the 1/3 rule (110k America’s, 120k Europe/Asia, and 120k India) And factor in the 4 to 1 cost advantage (1st world vs third world) then the shift of heads to 3rd world pay for any impairment costs incurred. Thus 2 billion at 45k nets 45k heads impacted with 3rd world going up at the expense of 1st world. The exiting of commodity HW (Power and possibly storage) would result in another possibly 3-5k reduction. 1k plant for each HW product, with 1k sales/channel in America’s and Europe/Asia. This would be self funding via the fire sale of the HW manufacturing business and IP sales. This all nets to 50k impacted after the dust settles. Now IBM has a lean go to market machine focused around Cloud, LINUX, AI, Enterprise, and REDHAT, Does anyone see that the RA was structured to support this plan?
Finally folks are speculating about a 2nd round. I would speculate IBM isn’t after anymore streamlining of their go to market strategy, but rather shopping “perform” services (think commodity body shop services already in India). That would mostly come out of Cognitive, GBS, and GTS. Perhaps 60k heads total. I would expect IBM to cut a deal with one of the body shops already in India. Thus no impingement charges. Again just a speculation

Any