That sale of virtually all of Sprint's tower infrastructure announced back in July has now been finalized, giving buyer TowerCo a whole boatload of CDMA, iDEN, and WiMAX footprint it didn't have just a few hours ago. Sprint looks at the $670 million sale as a way to buy itself some "additional liquidity" and "focus more closely on our core business of providing communications services to our customers" (but let's be honest, it's really just about the additional liquidity); TowerCo, meanwhile, sounds like it's anticipating that it'll be able to lease out space on the towers to other carriers as they expand down the road. For its part, Sprint wasted no time signing up for a long-term lease on the very towers it just sold, but here's our doozy of a question: dare we say they're now a TowerCo MVNO?

[Thanks, moochy989]

We imagine that entertainer-turned-investor Bono has enough cash banked so that Palm could croak tomorrow with little ill effect on his lifestyle, but still, it's gotta sting. UBS has now slapped Palm stock with a rather yucky "sell" rating, acknowledging that new products are on track for August and November but citing concerns over an "increasingly competitive landscape" from the likes of Apple with the 3G iPhone and RIM with the BlackBerry Bold, all combined with the knowledge that its Linux-based wares won't be hitting until next year. Could the schedule be tightened up at all if they were to adopt Android, and if so, would it be the right move?

[Via Palm Infocenter]

So, is Bell Canada ready for a buyout? Yep. Bell Canada's corporate baby daddy, BCE Inc., has announced that it's in talks with four companies -- three Canadian and one US -- to sell out in a deal that could ultimately fetch as much as $40 CDN (about $35) for a company that's currently trading in the $38.50 CDN range. Of course, this all runs counter to the firm denials Bell was issuing just a couple weeks back (no surprise there). Current indications are that none of the firms involved in buyout discussions are already in the wireless carrier biz, so our hopes (read: fears) of a US-Canadian supercarrier are, at least for the moment, dashed.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Alright, Palm, your days of making incrementally improved, merely evolutionary Treos may finally be numbered. Or not, depending on how your new owner wants to roll, but either way, rumors have now gone from a simmer to a full boil that a Palm sale is imminent. Like, seriously imminent -- Morgan Stanley, which Palm hired to court suitors, allegedly wants to get a deal sealed by March 22. The company -- which rose to stardom as a division of USRobotics and 3Com and made a huge splash in the then-budding smartphone market -- is now a shadow of its former self thanks largely to a split which saw its software division ultimately getting bought by Japan's ACCESS. Be that as it may, word has it the sale should command $20 a share -- a healthy premium over Palm's recent pricing -- and at least four companies are rumored to have interest: Nokia (could we finally see that Symbian-powered Treo?), Motorola, and a pair of private investment firms. We wish you the best of luck, Palm; there's definitely a certain sentimental value associated with your name these days, and we hope your new owners do what it takes to get you back on the straight and narrow. Keep pluggin' away at that WiMAX handset!

Offloading unprofitable mobile phone businesses seems to be all the rage in Europe as of late, with Philips now announcing that they'll be transferring their operations to a firm going by "CEC" -- or China Electronics Corporation, if you're into longhand. Philips isn't exactly a household name for cellphones here in the States, but they take in about €400 million (about a half billion USD) annually across the globe, so the deal is no small one. Similar to Siemens' agreement with BenQ, CEC will be given a license to use the Philips name on its phones for the next five years, at which point they'll have to go it alone (if they make it that long). Assuming all the usual regulatory stuff pans out, the money is expected to change hands before the year's out.

[Via Geekzone]

Say you're zoning out in SFO (that's San Francisco International Airport for the lay folk), waiting for a connecting flight, and you start to daydream about that Motorola PEBL you've had your eye on for the past few months. Wouldn't it be great if you could get the phone, like, right now, all without having to interact with a human being? Motorola has started pilot testing of its "INSTANTMOTO" automated kiosks in SFO and Macy's flagship State Street store in downtown Chicago (pictured above), offering a variety of phones -- both the unlocked and carrier-locked varieties -- and all manner of accessories. The pilot program will be expanded to a total of about 20 airport and mall locations by year's end; we're guessing it feels a little weird to feed a vending machine with a couple hundred singles, but fortunately, the vend-bot happily takes plastic.