Softbank Group said it is exploring options to monetize its stake in U.S. wireless carrier T-Mobile, a move that could raise as much as $20 billion and is part of a larger plan to sell off assets.

Softbank said Tuesday that it is exploring its options with the T-Mobile stake, which it acquired after it merged its U.S.-based wireless company Sprint with T-Mobile in April. According to reports, Softbank could sell as much as $20 billion of its T-Mobile stock, or about 200 million shares, as part of a larger effort to monetize about $40 billion in assets.

Softbank acquired its Sprint stake in 2013, but the wireless company never lived up to its expectations and sold the wireless carrier to T-Mobile in April in a deal valued at $26 billion. 

Softbank has struggled of late, mainly because of bad investments made by its Vision Fund, the $100 billion venture capital arm formed by Softbank founder, chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son in 2017 to invest in leading edge technologies. Big bets on tech companies like Uber and WeWorks fizzled -- it reduced the value of its WeWork stake from $47 billion to just $2.9 billion and its Uber interest lost about $10 billion in value -- leading to an $18 billion loss for the VC arm last year.

In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, T-Mobile said Softbank is considering several options to monetize its investment, including a private placement offering, private negotiations with T-Mobile, Deutsche Telekom or third parties, derivative or hedging transactions, margin loans or other structured transactions.

Deutsche Telekom has been speculated as a possible buyer of Softbank’s T-Mobile shares, and though it would need to sign off on some transactions, has not commented on its intentions.

T-Mobile stock, down as much as 4% in early trading Tuesday, was priced at $103.03 each (down 1.6%) by the early afternoon. 

After a two-month search, Netflix has filled its top corporate communications position, hiring away Facebook’s top PR executive, Rachel Whetstone.

Whetstone replaces Jonathan Friedland, a former Disney executive and seven-year Netflix veteran who was fired under very transparent circumstances back in June for what the company described as inappropriate language choices.

If the top streaming service is a hotbed for drama, also factoring in the conspicuous exit of House of Cards star Kevin Spacey last year, Whetstone seems to have the career experience to weather the storm.

In recent months, of course, her plate has been full managing PR issues including Facebook’s growing reputation as a global privacy scourge, not to mention accusations that it’s letting itself be used as a tool for Russian election influence.

Whetstone’s resume also includes stops at Uber, where she worked for founder and ousted CEO Travis Kalanick, and Google.

As for Friedland, he was very publicly let go in June, with Netflix CEO describing the PR executive’s use of racial language … in meetings about the use of racial language.

“I’ve made a decision to let go of Jonathan Friedland. Jonathan contributed greatly in many areas, but his descriptive use of the N-word on at least two occasions at work showed unacceptably low racial awareness and sensitivity, and is not in line with our values as a company,” Hastings wrote in a widely distributed company memo.

"I'm leaving Netflix after seven years," said Friedland, responding in a statement. ”Leaders have to be beyond reproach in the example we set and unfortunately I fell short of that standard when I was insensitive in speaking to my team about words that offend in comedy. I feel awful about the distress this lapse caused to people at a company I love and where I want everyone to feel included and appreciated. I feel honored to have built a brilliant and diverse global team and to have been part of this collective adventure in building the world's leading entertainment service."

On the eve of the annual Data Privacy Day (Jan. 28), Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) asked Uber for more information on its data privacy policies.

He had asked the app-based taxi service late last year for information on the "scope, transparency and enforceability" of those policies but was not happy with what he said was a lack of detail.

He wants answers to follow-up questions by Feb. 11, covering topics including Uber's indefinite retention of customers' personal information, customers' ability to opt in or out of information sharing with third parties and how the company determines which employees should have access to customer records.

Franken has been one of the most active senators in the privacy space and is currently ranking member on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law. Uber, based in San Francisco, is available in 50 cities across 25 countries.

Before the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo fades deeper into our memory banks, it’s a good time to bring up one of the show’s primary themes – improving the customer experience. 

And I don’t have to be the first person to tell anyone that cable could sure use some improvement in this area. It’s one of the reasons why Comcast now has an executive – Charlie Herrin, its new senior vice president, customer experience -- solely focused on this area.

And the industry’s lagging position in the area came up in one of the opening general sessions at this year's show in Denver, with Tony Werner, Comcast’s executive vice president and chief technology officer, acknowledging that companies like Amazon, Zappos and Uber are raising the bar on the consumer experience. “We haven’t lived up to the old bar,” Werner said.

Hey, to fix a problem, one must first admit that the problem exists, rather than hoping against hope that ignoring it will make it magically vanish.

So, Uber. Werner identified the car-hailing service as one of the prime examples cable should be living up to from an experience standpoint. A lot of people use it. I’ve used it. It’s nice to be able to track when my ride will show up, what kind of car my driver is driving, know what my driver looks like, and (gasp!) communicate directly with said driver. And the driver knows I’ll be submitting a rating based on how well he or she does the job, so there's an enhanced layer of accountability in play here. And I don’t have to worry about paying with cash. All-in-all, Uber’s provided me with a user experience (down to the smell) that’s better than what I usually get from a traditional taxi cab.

Given how Uber’s platform performs and its aren't-I-cool cache, it’s now popular for a company to say they’re going to Uber-ize whatever it is they do.

Cable’s no different. In fact, “the Uberi-zation of cable” was part of a pitch I got awhile back from CSG Systems, a billing and customer care company that works with Comcast and other MSOs, and is one of the companies in the industry that might have an actual say in how the industry can improve the customer experience.

According to Chad Dunavant, CSG’s vice president of North American products, his company and the cable guys are working on systems that can deliver an Uber-like experience – giving customers a way to track the truck, know when the technician will arrive, provide the customer with some knowledge about the person who is on the way, and, generally, enabling a tightening of the appointment window… things that can boost the overall experience.

And that sort of platform, enabled by enhanced field workforce apps that use geographic analytics and GPS info and algorithms can estimate things like drive time, can also improve an operator's bottom line -- for one, reducing call center, which can run $5 to $8, depending on the length of the call.

“The need for techs are increasing, not decreasing,” Dunavant said, noting that services are getting increasingly complex with the whole-home WiFi and home security and automation entering the mix.

And that’s just on the reactive end. By making better use of scheduling calendar data, systems will also be more proactive, making outbound calls or text messages to notify customer of appointments on the day before or the day of the appointment, and allowing customers to reschedule appointments directly from an app.

“It leads to that Uber-like experience,” Dunavant said, noting that some of those piece-parts, including real-time notifications, are already here today. CSG’s Workforce Express scheduling and resource allocation manager for field techs already store tech profiles, but more integration will be required to pull together the full vision.

“The entire ecosystem change starts to happen during the next nine-to-twelve months,” he said.

While Uber isn’t perfect (recent accounts of its vicious, over-the-top competitive tactics might lead some to view Uber as too cable-like in some areas), it does provide elements of an overall customer experience that cable can and should shoot for as the industry seeks ways to improve its tarnished and marred customer service legacy.