Sprint Charging $10 Fee to Nextel Subs Who Don't Upgrade

[JohnHovah]

I love getting cussed out by old people, which has been happening alot since they sent letters about the 10 bucks. Some people understand and take the .99 phone on sprint others flip out. One was so pissed he said he was done with sprint and was going prepaid. He walked out with a boost phone. Which pays better than if he upgraded to sprint since its considered a new activation so it worked out in the end lol

 

Sent from my LG-LS970 using Tapatalk 2

 

Jokes on him, Boost is still a wholly owned subsidiary of Sprint.

[Deval]

Press came out in june of this year that iden phones were offiicially no longer available for purchase.

 

In the event someone signed a 2 year contract in early 2012, they would def still be under contract. Increasing the mrc would definitely be grounds for etf free termination, but so is the shutdown of the network. This fee is just going to cause the inevitable conversation to hopefully happen even sooner.

 

It hurts but its unavoidable.

 

I believe all iDen devices were blocked from new sales all throughout this year.

[irev210]

Doesn't sprint only have about 1.4 million subs clinging to iden? Sounds to me that they could handle that loss, Softbank or not...

 

Edit: according to investors.sprint.com, at the close of Q3 there were 2.3 million postpaid nextel subscribers and 830k prepaid. So, as of the end of September, 3.1 million iden subs compared to 52.9 million on the sprint platform... 5 and a half percent is low enough for sprint to absorb, especially when they have been converting over half the nextel churn.

 

52.9 million is all customers from all sources.

 

The 2.3 million postpaid are rare and valuable subs. There is customer acquisition costs - if you can acquire old nextel subscribers for less than what it would cost you to get new CDMA customers, it's money well spent.

 

As for not having any PTT solution at all, that would cost even more money.

 

It may not sound like a lot, but when you work through a question like that it's a go/no go decision based on the numbers behind it. It's a giant hassle, but at the end of the day, it's better for sprint than not doing it at all.

[ChadBroChillz]

52.9 million is all customers from all sources.

 

The 2.3 million postpaid are rare and valuable subs. There is customer acquisition costs - if you can acquire old nextel subscribers for less than what it would cost you to get new CDMA customers, it's money well spent.

 

As for not having any PTT solution at all, that would cost even more money.

 

It may not sound like a lot, but when you work through a question like that it's a go/no go decision based on the numbers behind it. It's a giant hassle, but at the end of the day, it's better for sprint than not doing it at all.

 

He was correct. Sprint has almost 56 million customers from all sources. 52.9 million from the Sprint brand and 3.1 million from the Nextel brand.

 

Since they are already planning on turning off the network in june 2013, then I feel like it is worth it to try and keep as many of these customers are possible before shutoff date.

[irev210]

 

He was correct. Sprint has almost 56 million customers from all sources. 52.9 million from the Sprint brand and 3.1 million from the Nextel brand.

 

Since they are already planning on turning off the network in june 2013, then I feel like it is worth it to try and keep as many of these customers are possible before shutoff date.

 

Where are you seeing this?

 

For Q3 2012 I see 29.844 million postpaid subs, 14.608 prepaid subs on Sprint postpaid and Sprint's various prepaid brands.

[ChadBroChillz]

Where are you seeing this?

 

For Q3 2012 I see 29.844 million postpaid subs, 14.608 prepaid subs on Sprint postpaid and Sprint's various prepaid brands.

 

You are missing the 8.405 million wholesale/affiliate accounts.

 

http://investors.sprint.com/Cache/1001169639.PDF?D=&O=PDF&iid=4057219&Y=&T=&fid=1001169639

[irev210]

 

You are missing the 8.405 million wholesale/affiliate accounts.

 

http://investors.spr...&fid=1001169639

 

ah gotcha, I thought you were just talking about sprint customers (sprint and sprint-owned prepaid brands).

 

There is a big difference in the customer lifetime value between a postpaid sub, a prepaid sub, and a sub from wholesale/affiliate.

 

A postpaid direct sprint sub is probably worth 20x more than a wholesale sub (at least).

[Fraydog]

http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php/1765908-Nextel-iDEN-Life-On-A-Dying-Network?p=15008451#post15008451

 

I kept the light on in the HoFo thread about the Nextel Dying Network article on Pocketnow. The author of the article, Michael Fisher, has popped in the thread a few times.

 

He'll do another story when the Nextel platform shuts down.