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Marcelo Claure, Town Hall Meetings, New Family Share Pack Plan, Unlimited Individual Plan, Discussion Thread


joshuam

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Redspark: you made a very strong argument. Great points. I had not thought of it that way before (primarily because I do value voice quality more than most).

 

Perhaps it is a generational thing. Milennials likely favor data over voice and that makes sense as they have been the target of team magenta's marketing for quite some time.

 

Either way, Sprint needs to keep up the good work they've been doing by filling in those band 41 holes.

 

While the network is spectacular in Atlanta, we are currently on vacation in the Savannah/Hilton Head area and the network here...uh...well, it needs some major investment to even begin to approach the level of performance in the A.

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Thanks JohnnygATL.

 

I recall Marcelo putting a priority on Call/Text performance as part of his turnaround strategy early on in his tenure and it clearly shows. Sprint has a great CDMA network for Voice/Text (which hopefully turns into VoLTE at the right time when Sprint can ensure a good experience on par with its current CDMA/1x Advanced Network.) Data performance wasn't given the same priority and now we are where we are... better than what it used to be but not good enough to have the customer gains that T-Mobile is having.

 

The Survey that Saw is referring to seems to be missing the market segment that's contributing to T-Mobile's growth. Essentially, Sprint's data performance is a deal breaker for that market segment. Instead, Saw's referring to a Survey which is telling him (and other Sprint executives) that Call/Text is the main customer satisfaction driver. If this was truly the case, Sprint would be having these Customer gains, not T-Mobile.

 

Unless we want to attribute all of these Customer gains to T-Mobile's millennial marketing (which has been targeted and effective), I think Sprint's executives are relying on bad information and it's guided their strategy to this point for network priorities.

 

Sprint's network will eventually get better (and it is). It's just hard to win Customers back. For the past 6 weeks, Sprint has been offering 1 Year of free service for people to bring their own device. Unless we're seeing substantial gains from other carriers, it means that those customers are satisfied with their Call/Text performance on those carriers even if it's worse than Sprint (per Rootmetrics) and may not be coming over because of Sprint's data performance (per Rootmetrics) versus their experience on their current carrier.

 

More significantly, a lack of gains from this indicates that those customers would rather stay on their current carrier than have 1 Year of free service on Sprint. And if we asked them why they're staying put and not coming over to Sprint, I think it comes down to Data performance, not Call/Text.

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These are great points Redspark. I would say it is kind of mixed now in terms of what gets noticed more, slow/no data or dropped calls. In many instances a data loss can result in some major issues (i.e. not being able to purchase a Metro North ticket here in the NYC market, especially at stations that still lack ticket terminals (Waterbury come on!)). A dropped call can be frustrating as can something urgent not loading. This is where Sprint really needs to work on the network. The number of cases where you go from blazing fast speeds to sub 4Mbps speeds is still too high. 

 

Also, it will be interesting to see how the Sprint earnings look, especially with the free promo. Both TMUS and T have beaten Wall Street predictions this past quarter. AT&T ended up having a much better quarter than projected and only lost ~80,000k post paid subscribers, but gained a bunch of prepaid. AT&T also reported record low churn, while TMUS was port positive against all the other three. TMUS added a ton of subscribers (even without their funky DIGITS accounting). Verizon reports tomorrow and projects have been saying they did not have a bad quarter either (looks like they might have just narrowly beaten expectations). That doesn't leave many churning customers for Sprint to take in this past quarter. Maybe they were able to get more new smartphone customers! Let's hope!

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Good points JustinRP37. To add to what you said, it's not just the data experience you have for yourself. It's also the experience that others see when you want to load something on your phone to tell them or show them. If it's slow or doesn't load, they inevitably ask what carrier you have. In my opinion, that's on par with a dropped or blocked call, but it's worse in that it's happening right in front of them. The phone has a Sprint logo on it or just in the top bar like it does on iOS and it's essentially a testimonial saying "Sprint doesn't have good data coverage/service for what you're doing right now." The entire purpose of this interaction between people is to show/share media or content and if Sprint's data network doesn't perform well for it to happen with a good experience, you'll essentially have a Sprint customer showing another prospective customer firsthand that Sprint may not meet their needs. And then you'll have the other person take out their device from a competitor and if it loads better, you'll have them ask the Sprint customer why they're with Sprint.

 

I'm curious if Sprint's Satisfaction Survey accounts for this.

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While the network is spectacular in Atlanta, we are currently on vacation in the Savannah/Hilton Head area and the network here...uh...well, it needs some major investment to even begin to approach the level of performance in the A.

 

IIRC, when I was in Savannah in March, there was no B41 at all.  The network performed well enough for my uses (except at the hotel in Richmond Hill), but there was definite room for improvement.

 

- Trip

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IIRC, when I was in Savannah in March, there was no B41 at all. The network performed well enough for my uses (except at the hotel in Richmond Hill), but there was definite room for improvement.

 

- Trip

Oh per SCP we were both on b41 mini macs with 2XCA in the beautiful historic district. But that was not every spot in the district and was not at all the case at the beach (Tybee Island) where we languished on mostly unusable 3G.

 

But those Nokia Mini macs are the silver lining. The fact that just this spring there was zero available band 41 and now speeds of 40 mbps can be had in isolated locations is at least a sign that some (though not enough) work is being done by Sprint contractors in the GA/SC coast market.

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Sprint is still carrying a substantial amount of debt. We'll get an update on things at the upcoming Earnings Conference Call on August 1st, but this shows what Sprint's up against in terms of having sufficient funds for CapEx across its network.

 

http://investors.sprint.com/financials/default.aspx

 

Debt Maturities as of March 31, 2017

 

FY 17': $4.875 Billion

FY 18': $6.032 Billion

FY 19': $4.085 Billion

FY 20': $2.532 Billion

FY 21': $3.755 Billion

FY 22': $2.520 Billion

FY 23': $8.010 Billion (That's quite a bit right there.... although they have a few years of breathing space before it hits.)

FY 24': $4.000 Billion

FY 28': $2.475 Billion

FY 31': $2.000 Billion

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Sprint is still carrying a substantial amount of debt. We'll get an update on things at the upcoming Earnings Conference Call on August 1st, but this shows what Sprint's up against in terms of having sufficient funds for CapEx across its network.

 

http://investors.sprint.com/financials/default.aspx

 

Debt Maturities as of March 31, 2017

 

FY 17': $4.875 Billion

FY 18': $6.032 Billion

FY 19': $4.085 Billion

FY 20': $2.532 Billion

FY 21': $3.755 Billion

FY 22': $2.520 Billion

FY 23': $8.010 Billion (That's quite a bit right there.... although they have a few years of breathing space before it hits.)

FY 24': $4.000 Billion

FY 28': $2.475 Billion

FY 31': $2.000 Billion

And you wonder why they desperately want some sort of merger. Between 2017 and 2018 they have to pay 10 billion on debt, that is a lot of money so I don't expect major network upgrades or expansion anytime soon. 

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And you wonder why they desperately want some sort of merger. Between 2017 and 2018 they have to pay 10 billion on debt, that is a lot of money so I don't expect major network upgrades or expansion anytime soon.

The 2017 debt is due actually right now while 2018 debt is due EOY. They have a gap where increased Capex can and is occurring.

 

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

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The 2017 debt is due actually right now while 2018 debt is due EOY. They have a gap where increased Capex can and is occurring.

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

That's good to know. How much is available for Capex and for how long?

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That's good to know. How much is available for Capex and for how long?

 

We will get this all next week on August 1st. Hopefully they do not do the same thing they did last year where they initially had a higher CAPEX but then lowered guidance throughout the year. If they do not add a tremendous amount of subscribers soon though, then I do not know what will happen with CAPEX. Latest murmurs are saying Verizon may have added postpaid subscribers this quarter (guidance is 125,000 additions), so that really does not leave much room for net postpaid gains. With their current offers, they should be bringing in a lot of subscribers. Yes Sprint did not advertise the free for a year online, but it did get picked up by several news articles on sites like CNN, USA Today, and Fox.

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Verizon also posted a strong quarter and met and exceeded projections with postpaid net additions of 614k and a churn of just 0.94%. Now that the other big three have reported, it will be very interesting to see Sprint's numbers next week. 

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Verizon also posted a strong quarter and met and exceeded projections with postpaid net additions of 614k and a churn of just 0.94%. Now that the other big three have reported, it will be very interesting to see Sprint's numbers next week.

I agree and the reason why sprint is down today.
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Apologies if this has been covered already, but the Sprint sponsorship of Pokemon Go is finally paying off.

 

Background: Pokemon Go had an event where 20,000 people went to a single park to use their game

Problem: 20,000 people accessing a data-intensive game in a very small area is bad news

Situation: Sprint was only provider to deploy COWs (I assume thanks to my tweet)

Problem: Event was a complete disaster because the only people who could play were Sprint and Tmobile users. No one else could connect.

 

And now the Pokemon Go community is furious at Verizon and AT&T but speaking well of Sprint

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/6pqgmg/so_apparently_verizon_chose_not_to_deploy_pop_up/?st=j5mm6260&sh=74febf81

 

Dat word of mouth tho.

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Verizon also posted a strong quarter and met and exceeded projections with postpaid net additions of 614k and a churn of just 0.94%. Now that the other big three have reported, it will be very interesting to see Sprint's numbers next week.

 

I hope we get a good update from Sprint.

 

I also wonder if Sprint will extend the 1 Year of Free Service Promotion again. It's set to expire on July 31st, the day before Sprint's Earning's Call.

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Apologies if this has been covered already, but the Sprint sponsorship of Pokemon Go is finally paying off.

 

Background: Pokemon Go had an event where 20,000 people went to a single park to use their game

Problem: 20,000 people accessing a data-intensive game in a very small area is bad news

Situation: Sprint was only provider to deploy COWs (I assume thanks to my tweet)

Problem: Event was a complete disaster because the only people who could play were Sprint and Tmobile users. No one else could connect.

 

And now the Pokemon Go community is furious at Verizon and AT&T but speaking well of Sprint

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/6pqgmg/so_apparently_verizon_chose_not_to_deploy_pop_up/?st=j5mm6260&sh=74febf81

 

Dat word of mouth tho.

Think we may have some people switching over soon. Any to be honest the game doesn't use much data, you can play for months and only consume a few hundred MB, but still you need to be able to access their servers.

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Apologies if this has been covered already, but the Sprint sponsorship of Pokemon Go is finally paying off.

 

Background: Pokemon Go had an event where 20,000 people went to a single park to use their game

Problem: 20,000 people accessing a data-intensive game in a very small area is bad news

Situation: Sprint was only provider to deploy COWs (I assume thanks to my tweet)

Problem: Event was a complete disaster because the only people who could play were Sprint and Tmobile users. No one else could connect.

 

And now the Pokemon Go community is furious at Verizon and AT&T but speaking well of Sprint

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/6pqgmg/so_apparently_verizon_chose_not_to_deploy_pop_up/?st=j5mm6260&sh=74febf81

 

Dat word of mouth tho.

 

 

I didn't realize people still played Pokemon Go...

 

Good showing for Sprint though!

Edited by WiseGuy321
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The way I view this, is dependent on what plan for progress us as individual supporters of Sprint wish to see the company use, technically-speaking.

 

If Sprint went with Comcast and Charter, that likely would see Sprint finally be able to begin mass deployment of spectrum, along with network densification, that which basically was put on hold after Softbank took over and decided Sprint needed austerity more than network progress. While Sprint's financials aren't perfect, they're better, yet Sprint hasn't quite advanced the way it was on track to in finally improving on their reputation. However, even with Comcast and Charter and refocusing on the network, its going to be difficult for Sprint's reputation, especially with Comcast on board.

 

The T-Mobile deal would put a final nail in the coffin to Sprint's old reputation. It will be seen like Sprint rose from the dead with a massive rebirth into something that magically turns Sprint into a super powerful force in wireless that will be epic domination over the industry. So long as the only possible spectrum given up in a deal is limited to 800mhz spectrum, at most, between the combined networks and spectrum of Sprint and T-Mobile, it'll be a massive competitor in the industry.

 

The problem with T-Mobile, is while we can speculate who the new CEO might be, we don't know that for sure. There still is a chance it might be John Legere, which as most here know, I don't believe that will be a good thing, other than he might be one of the best people to then get a deal done to merge Dish in, which if he does, will change my mind about Legere just a bit, as I'll have to give him credit if he does that.

 

Otherwise, there is the notion that the growth Sprint will have in this case, isn't a natural, organic growth of band 41, the kind we'll likely see with Comcast and Charter. There will be a mess of merging networks and spectrum that will take some time and be a mess for a bit. I'm thinking in this case, perhaps Legere wouldn't be too bad to have around for this, as T-Mobile has proven to be good with their network development.

 

Still, those are differences between them, and its difficult to really say which is better.

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I really would love this, too. Let's not forget where Tmo got the $ it needed to go from 0 to 60 rather quickly. Maybe this supposed infusion could possibly do the same to help unlock Sprint's great potential.
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I honestly do not know how well a potential tie-up with cable would go. Yes Sprint might get some funding from them, but I really, and I stress REALLY, do not know many people that would want to give their cable company MORE business than they already have to. Comcast is one of the most hated companies in the country (I actually enjoy their service when I visit places with it, and they improve their network). I won't place much stock in a reselling deal unless there are other guarantees just because I do not think it would be a great business model. For the cable companies, there isn't much margin in bundling wireless service and any negative cellular service would also then look bad for the cable company. For Sprint, they would get an influx of cash most likely (which could go to CAPEX or debt), but they also would not have the margins on those subscribers as they would if they just sold their product directly to the customers.

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