The US bidder has received commitment letters from five banks, including Barclays Bank and Jefferies & Co, to back its bid, according to people who are familiar with the matter.

Dish has now secured close to $12 billion, if $2.6 billion in bonds raised last week is also included.

However Dish has not paid any commitment fees to the banks as yet and will not owe them any money unless they make use of the loans, sources said. Charlie Ergen, Dish’s chairman, is reluctant to pay such fees until it was the last obstacle before Sprint backs Dish’s bid as “potentially superior” to rival SoftBank’s.

Meanwhile SoftBank is pushing ahead with regulatory approval. It has now received all the necessary approvals from state regulators for the Sprint acquisition, with the most recent coming the California Public Utilities Commission. Applications were filed with 23 state regulators, plus the District of Columbia in November 2012.

SoftBank and Sprint “continue to work closely” with the Federal Communications Commission and other Federal agencies, which have still to approve the transaction.

Parallel to regulatory approval, the Japanese company is attempting to gain political backing for the deal. A Bloomberg report said SoftBank was prepared to offer the US government a veto over a director who would sit on the Sprint board and keep an eye on national-security issues should the takeover proceed.

SoftBank has already said it will not use telecoms equipment supplied by Huawei, the Chinese firm who causes such unease in US national-security circles. The Japanese firm has previously told US politicians that it would remove the Chinese vendor’s equipment from the network of Clearwire, the operator in which Sprint is trying to buy the 50 per cent it does not already won.

Removing Huawei equipment could cost SoftBank up to $1 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal, who spoke with people familiar with the situation.

The increase, due to come into effect on 1 May 2013, has been criticised by consumer groups.

“Below-the-line fees are nothing more than a way for carriers to stealthily increase their prices,” Derek Turner, research director at Free Press, a public interest group, told WSJ. “AT&T’s administrative fees are no different than the hundreds of other components that go into the cost of doing business.”

An AT&T spokesperson quoted in the report said other carries had similar practices, and that customers were given 30 days’ notice about the charge.

The fee covers “certain expenses, such as interconnection and cell-site rents and maintenance” added the spokesperson.

According to Citifgroup, the new fee could bring in almost $350 million in new revenue this year, reaching $518 million in 2014.

AT&T had 70.7 million contract wireless subscribers as of 31 March 2013.

Telefonica, which scrapped handset subsidies in Spain over a year ago, has reduced the Samsung Galaxy S4 by 15 per cent, going from €755 to €639. The South Korean vendor’s Galaxy Mini 2 has been slashed 30 per cent, to €116.

Other smartphones getting the cut-price treatment include the Samsung Galaxy SIII Mini (down 16 per cent), the Nokia Lumia 520 (16 per cent) and the Sony Xperia U (18 per cent).

Telefonica maintains that the price cuts do not herald a return to handset subsidies. The operator says it simply wants to pass on savings to customers from buying terminals in bulk.

That may be so – for the time being – but the non-handset subsidy model pursued by Telefonica in cash-strapped Spain seems to be under threat.

According to figures released this week by CMT, Spain’s telecoms regulator, Movistar registered a net loss of 248,000 customers. For the first three months of this year, the net customer loss has been a staggering 700,000.

As of 31 March 2013, Movistar’s market share by subscribers was 35.6 per cent. That’s three percentage points down from a year ago.

MVNOs with cheaper offers have been the main beneficiaries. They logged 210,000 net customer gains during March.

True, there are margin gains to be had from scrapping handset subsidies. The OIBDA margin for Telefonica Spain (which includes both wireline and wireless businesses) was 47 per cent during Q1 2013, an impressive leap from the 42.6 per cent achieved the same quarter a year ago.

Other Q1 2013 metrics, however, are not so pleasing to the eye. Handset revenue dropped 67.4 per cent, to €141 million, while mobile service revenues slipped 13.6 per cent to €1.2 billion.

And if customers are being lost to competitors, there is less of an addressable market to pitch data packages to, which might offset falls in voice and messaging revenue.

Movistar’s data revenue fell 7.4 per cent during Q1 2013, to €399. And no doubt OIBDA margins will be squeezed after the smartphone price cuts.

Telefonica made the difficult decision last year to stop handset subsidies for new customers, perhaps willing to sacrifice some market share for margin gain. Continued sharp drops in customer losses, however, may well force the Spanish to revisit that decision.

Cuts in smartphone prices could be the first sign that Telefonica’s resolve is weakening.

According to Mobile News, “Facebook has taken the decision not to give it a more widespread release” following the poor response to date. It had been scheduled for release in the UK by operator EE, which is set to inform buyers who had pre-ordered the device that these will not be fulfilled.

HTC has previously said that the device will be made available via Orange in France. It has not been confirmed if this launch has also been shelved, although it seems likely.

AT&T decided to stop selling First earlier this month, according to reports, after the device failed to appeal to potential buyers – even after a substantial price cut.

The unique selling point of the device – Facebook Home – has also received mixed reviews, leading the social networking giant to unveil a number of enhancements that are in the pipeline.

According to some reports, it is not the end of the line for the HTC hardware which underpins the device. The vendor is apparently readying a version running the stock Android platform, which will even omit HTC’s own Sense interface.

It has been noted previously that HTC First runs stock Android under Facebook Home – offering a low-cost entry point for users who want an Android smartphone which lacks vendor customisation.

According to Bloomberg, Waze is “fielding expressions of interest from multiple parties”, and is seeking a price of more than $1 billion. However, it was also suggested that the company may look to remain independent, and instead seek to raise cash through a funding round.

Facebook was said to be in talks with Waze earlier this month, and the company was previously linked with Apple – although this was swiftly rebuffed.

Bloomberg said that Apple is not currently in talks with Waze.

Waze, which blends mobile navigation with social features, was named Best Overall Mobile App at the 2013 Global Mobile Awards.

It is reported to have around 45 million users.

The company said that advancements in automotive connectivity standards such as MirrorLink and increasing smartphone ownership will create foundations allowing the connected car ecosystem to flourish, particularly in the developed North American and Western Europe markets.

In a new report, Juniper said that smartphone tethering will enable the creation of “a wealth of apps for the vehicle”.

It also introduces a new discovery home screen, and improved layout of Shazam tag results for both TV and music, and a new way to browse what friends have been watching and hearing.

The app includes a new interactive mapping feature, enabling users to see what people are listening to in any city in the world. It also introduces to the iPad two existing features of the Shazam app on other platforms – “lightning fast tagging” and full-screen lyrics display.

“During the last year, we have seen triple-digit growth in the number of downloads of the iPad version of our app,” said Rich Riley, CEO of the company.

The new design and features are expected to launch on Android devices “in the coming weeks”.

The company announced its intention to offer a revamped app for tablet users at Mobile World Congress earlier this year.

“There may be some new technologies that come in and completely replace [cellular], the same way that ethernet replaced data across the phone line,” Kutcher said during a wide-ranging discussion at CTIA.

While the US has unlimited data plans, plentiful WiFi and low prices due to competition, Kutcher said he realised the limitations of mobile networks when travelling in Europe.

“I got to feel what it’s like to be a consumer that’s worried about the amount of data that they’re consuming and is worried about making a phone call, and doesn’t want to make a phone call because it’s going to cost money,” he said.

Turning to VoIP-enabled services such as Skype and Viber, Kutcher realised how powerful they could be: “I think people are going to start looking at cellular and having that same feeling that ‘I’m not getting an experience that I should get, I want to get and deserve to get’. And if Apple wanted to turn on a unified hotspot, I don’t know that I would need a mobile carrier, and I think that network would get better and better very, very fast.”

“I think it would be crazy for major carriers to not go and try to buy those companies and overspend knowing that the market’s going to move there,” he added.

While generally being positive about Facebook — comparing it to modern day religion in building trust and praising its approach to advertising — he said it will be difficult for the social network to progress in mobile as other platforms are better at providing certain services.

“In some ways, it’s going to be hard to be brilliant at mobile for Facebook because it’s a little bit of a closed-wall platform once you’re on Facebook as a mobile application,” he noted, adding that a better approach for the company would be to provide external components such as Instagram.

Turning to Twitter, Kutcher said his experience of the service has changed for the worse: “My experience of Twitter has changed for me pretty drastically. The media kind of fucked it up. It’s a lot of people selling shit I don’t want,” he said.

“The way I use Twitter has become more limited. It felt like the democratisation of media. Now it just feels like the media again.”

However, he said Twitter has real potential as a platform to support intelligent mobile objects — for example tweeting a user when a bus is due or to tell them their coffee is ready.

Discussing his current technology investments, Kutcher said: “They have to be mobile. You can’t be a consumer-facing technology right now and not be mobile.”

However, he said a “mobile-first” approach isn’t necessarily a must, due to app discovery not yet being mature enough and having to consider how mobile services play across desktop and the web: “HTML5 is still a really important layer in pushing lightweight virtual content through mobile,” he said.