Sprint to buy PCS spectrum from Revol Wireless

[S4GRU]

I don't disagree with that assessment to some extent. However, it is also up to Son-san to make the choices needed to put Sprint on a path to growth. That will require taking a hard look at Sprint's leadership and where Sprint plans to go and reworking them as necessary.

I bloviated this very thing recently.

 

Robert via Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

 

[dnicekid]

In todays world everyone wants to save a buck, nothing wrong with that. That said I have more than a few friends who make some pretty good $$$ that left sprint for straight talk, The tmo $30 100 minute data/text plan, and a several who went to tmo. They were all trying to save money, and were fed up with sprints buildout. In fairness, most of these people also have multiple lines with teenagers and wanted something flexible, so when needed the phone could be used for discipline without them being stuck paying out a contract.

 

The point I am trying to get is tmo was the budget carrier, that people with bad/no credit went to it seemed.

 

Now, many who are more frugal seem to be headed over there. The knock on them has always been coverage, many are saying "how often do I leave" to justify spending the extra money with vzw/att. Many other power users are headed over there as well for the unlimited data.

 

Their ceo has done a great job appealing to  the youth,  like the way  nextel/boost did  for awhile.  

 

I do think Mr Son will turn Sprint around, I wouldnt be surprised if hesse started cleaning out sooner than later. NV is rapidly moving along as we see here, so I expect to see some marketing real soon..

 

*** has anyone seen a sprint commercial lately, I havent in a week or 2?***

[richy]

I don't disagree with that assessment to some extent. However, it is also up to Son-san to make the choices needed to put Sprint on a path to growth. That will require taking a hard look at Sprint's leadership and where Sprint plans to go and reworking them as necessary.

 

It's tough to blame it on management without knowing exactly where the issue with the rollout lies, there are third party companies involved with the physical work and some of the backhaul supply so in theory problems could have arisen elsewhere. They could also have come from the top. My personal worry is that there is a merger with tmo and Son decides that Legere did a better job and puts him in as CEO.

 

Whilst Legere hasn't so much polished the proverbial turd so much as rolled it in glitter, his actual achievements have been mostly marketing based and short term. One very telling metric would be the ARPU : avg data use, We know Sprints subs pay more on average (not a bash, just comparing ARPU) but I bet Tmo subs use far more data. Long term that spells far more issues than some temporary bleed of subs attracted by shiny & cheap. People attracted by shiny & cheap will come running back when they have a few months experience of tmo and by definition are people who can easily be lured back with a special offer. I am lucky that the two tmo towers I use most aren't overloaded and both have LTE. Take a drive and the tmo story quickly turns to congested LTE \ faux G or frequently less bars than a mormon church. ARPU alone suggested that whilst they may target similar demographics Sprint either gets the 'better' subs or tmo is useless at getting money out of them. 

 

Sprint has the money to keep going with NV. Personally I think they rushed the Spark brand out a little early and risked confusing people and havign them associate unSparky experiences with the new brand but thats just me but otherwise all is going well with Sprint, just slowly based upon our perspective but darn fast if you look at historically what it takes to rebuild an entire nationwide network. I know another pinkish cellco which still hasn't managed a nationwide network. It is easy to lose sight of what the two companies are doing, one is rebuilding a nationwide network then rolling out LTE on two more bands, the other is rolling out LTE. They both have capacity issues, one has too much the other not enough, I know which I would rather be! 

[dnicekid]

You brought up some good points about management, all I know is I wanted it done yesterday as I am sure many of us did.

I also agree spark came out to quickly. Maybe the could have  let people on it but just not announce it until a market  was completely deployed. This might have been in response to vzw deploying the 20x20 in big cities?

 

I do think you hit right on with confusing people, and by thinking they would get these super speeds everywhere they went led to "unsparky" experiences. 

 

Sprint really needs something catchy, something people can believe in to bring the people back. 

[richy]

Thanks I cannot wait also.

 

Re 'poor people' etc. When I worked for a cableco we used to factor in iphone release months into our late payment numbers \ credit control staffing. it took a while to figure it out and quite a bit of evidence before the correlation was accepted, but there's a genuine bump in late payment within certain demographics after the release of an iphone. It stuffed our debt scoring for a while as it isn't entirely income based so much as age & income related.

 

As for bringing people back, honestly in 18 months I see them flooding back. In some areas tmo has surplus capacity, but like any network they also have plenty of areas where they are already at capacity with no real plans for more capacity in the near future. They can attract all the subs they want but they then have to keep them. All those families with 4 iphones and unlimited data are going to just turn right back round and head to Sprint when they find tmo not only has coverage issues but capacity issues. Plus whilst tmo is doign a fine job of shaking up the industry and prompting some new ways of pricing, moving away from ETF's hurts them as well. Sprint can make it attractive to switch back, pay off phone credit charges with tmo & a 30 day free trial to prove NV is as good as they say and they will come back as quickly as they left. Word of mouth is powerful, as soon as it gets around that Sprint has changed, that personal experience will work and bring people back. I'm not with Tmo because they are great, they just made the most sense short term until Sprint gets NV rolled out fully here (probably another 12-24 months depending on what you view as fully rolled out, too many sites without even a permit application in) once NV is done Sprint makes the most sense by far.