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Article snippet: Masayoshi Son, the Japanese telecommunications mogul, has always been known as an inveterate deal maker. But amid a breakneck spree of investing in start-ups, Mr. Son’s most anticipated moves will likely involve an old-line phone service provider: Sprint. The reason is clear. Sprint, controlled by Mr. Son’s SoftBank, has long lagged behind the two titans of American wireless, Verizon and AT&T, each of which has more subscribers than Sprint and T-Mobile combined. Mr. Son has never let go of the idea that Sprint needs to get bigger to survive, and has had on-again, off-again discussions with T-Mobile. Now, SoftBank is busy exploring a complex takeover of Charter Communications, the cable giant whose empire stretches from New York City to Los Angeles. The convoluted deal would involve SoftBank forming a new company to acquire both Sprint and Charter. The Japanese company would own a majority of the new entity, even though Sprint’s market value, at $34 billion, represents roughly a third of Charter’s $99 billion. For its part, Charter has expressed little interest in any deal with Sprint. The cable operator said this week that it had no interest in buying Sprint (though Mr. Son envisions a different kind of deal). The emergence of the potential bid for Charter is the latest deal-making wrinkle that SoftBank has weighed for Sprint over the past five years. Mr. Son first bought control of the embattled wireless company in 2013 for nearly $22 billion, and then quick... Link to the full article to read more