The shareholders of Sprint Nextel have approved a revised offer form SoftBank to take over the company concluding a long standing fight to acquire the third largest telecom service provider in the US market.

Dish Network Corp had earlier said that it would not submit a revised bid for the Sprint Nextel Corp. Masayoshi Son, the Chief Executive Officer of SoftBank Corp had earlier said that rival bidder, Dish Network Corp would be a poor match for telecom major, Sprint Nextel Corp. SoftBank has been gathering support for its $20.1 billion bid for the company.

Sprint, which is the third largest telecom service provider in the US, had agreed to the bid from SoftBank but Dish launched an alternative bid valued at $25.5 billion in the previous month. Dish said that Sprint's decision to reduce Dish's due diligence process has made it impracticable for the company to submit a revised bid. Dish indicated that it will continue to focus on its attempts to acquire Clearwire.

Sprint said that about 80 per cent of its shares outstanding voted in favour of $21.6 billion deal. The deal will transfer a 78 per cent stake to the Japanese firm.