Will the Dish run away with the Sprint?
I'm Bridget Carey and this is your CNET Update.
The satellite television provider, Dish, made a bid to merge wih Sprint for $25.5 billion.
Sprint was already talking about merging with the Japanese wireless provider called SoftBank but this Dish deal offers Sprint more money.
So, why would Sprint consider a deal with Dish?
Well, Sprint is in 3rd place
behind AT&T and Verizon.
So, it needs to do something to grow and standout.
Dish has 14 million subscribers.
Those can be new customers in some sort of bundle deal and Dish owns airwaves that Sprint could use to boost its network.
That means Sprint would have more capacity to handle more traffic and have a stronger connection.
Essentially a wider highway for data to travel on and that highway would be wider than its rivals AT&T and Verizon.
Dish has had its eyes on wireless for sometime now.
Before this, Dish tried to buy MetroPCS but that didn't work.
An earlier in the year, it made a bid for the Clearwire Network but Sprint always most to that company.
There were also reports that maybe Dish was talking to T-Mobile but it's more than just wireless.
Remember Dish bought Blockbuster in 2011.
It's time for more smartwatch rumors.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft is tinkering with making its own smartwatch.
This wouldn't be Microsoft's first dance with smartwatches.
In 2004, it launched software called Spot,
and it partnered with watchmakers like Fossil and Swatch.
This is one such watch with Spot.
These watches display the headlines for news, sports and weather but they were discontinued in 2008.
Continuing with Microsoft news, for those of you with Windows 8, the Bing apps have been updated.
Users can sort, manage and add different news categories and feeds into the news app.
The Maps app has a new search tool to track down local businesses or even see the location of people in your contacts.
Electronic
Arts is shutting down 3 games it has on Facebook.
The Sim Social, Sim City Social and Pet Society.
The games will no longer be available after June 14th.
And EA says it's retiring its games because activity has fallen off since they first launched on Facebook.
If you're in the market for a new TV or just wannt to dream about a new TV, check out this 55-inch Plasma in the Panasonic ST60 Series.
It's the first television to get a 5-star rating from CNET.
What makes it the most recommended TV ever, well, for the mid-level price range, it has outstanding quality and plenty of smart TV content.
Of course nothing's perfect.
Unlike everything, there are a few downsides but you can check out the full review online.
That's your tech news update.
We got more details on these stories at CNET.com/update.
From our studios in New York, I'm Bridget Carey.
