Sprint to combine Virgin and Boost and revive Nextel (also regional grocery chain thread)

[Paynefanbro]

http://www.phonedog.com/2013/12/31/sprint-reportedly-planning-to-combine-boost-and-virgin-mobile-revive-nextel-brand/

[jamisonshaw125]

oh god....

[JonnygATL]

This is retarded. Kill the Nextel brand and everything associated with it. Find another name for this business customer push!

[WiWavelength]

Combining the inner city Boost dawgs with Virgin sounds like a porno waiting to happen.

 

AJ

[Rickie546]

From seekingalpha.com

 

Sprint reportedly plans to bring back Nextel brand • 11:10 AM

• Six months after Sprint (S +1.6%) shut down its antiquated Nextel iDEN network, a source tells TechCrunch the carrier is looking to reintroduce the Nextel brand to help underpin its business services. Also, Sprint is said to be planning to merge its Boost and Virgin Mobile prepaid brands into a new prepaid brand called Sprint Freedom.
• The Nextel brand's reintroduction is said to be part of a larger push to reel in business users, one that will also feature more streamlined pricing and the promotion of Sprint's high-speed Spark 4G LTE service (available for now in just a few markets). Sprint's share of U.S. corporate/institutional mobile accounts badly trails that of market leaders Verizon and AT&T.
• Sprint has been competing better in the prepaid market, but competition in this space has been intensifying, thanks largely to the T-Mobile/MetroPCS merger and new prepaid offerings from AT&T (about to acquire prepaid carrier Leap Wireless).

Read comments

[Vette]

It sounds like they want to consolidate, but then they want to revive a dead brand as well? Makes little sense.

[KD8JBF]

Sounds like just some marketing Hulabaloo....Bring back  the "Nextel" name that Business knows and love and push it under Sprint NV/Spark network. Next everyone is going to wonder where the Nextel "Chirp" is...lol

[The Dave]

Calling it Nextel sounds like it could confuse people into thinking they have their direct connect back and old coverage. Sprint has finally moved past Nextel. It seems like a more appropriate solution would be to call it "Sprint Business" or "Sprint Broadband" for data services. Just keep one brand and make everything a division of the Sprint brand.

[JossMan]

Another article on it.......... http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/31/sprint-nextel-freedom/

 

[JeffDTD]

Everyone cries for rebranding. Sprint talks about brand consolidation and everyone cringes. If sprint can come up with a compelling business solutions package and wants to call it "nextel solutions" ... is that really any worse than the immediate paralysis that the sprint name apparently gives people?

Killing boost would be silly though. Too much low end street cred....there are boost stores even in my tiny market and you actually see people using boost more often... At least killing virgin would save licensing with branson...

 

Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk

 

[JossMan]

It would sound better using "Clear Business Solutions" for their fixed 4G data solutions, why use Nextel?  Nextel was killed off, it left that bad iDEN chirp ringing in everyone's ears.  And everyone remembers when Sprint Nextel starting sponsoring NASCAR, almost every diehard race fan had a dang annoying chirping phone....believe me I know, I live about a mile from the "World's Fastest Half Mile," Bristol Motor Speedway.  The first thing people are going to think is..."Is Sprint bringing back those annoying chirping phones?"

[4GHoward]

They should bring back the XOHM Brand Name.

 

[Terrell352]

I know if I was a uninformed customer and a network was shut down I would not want to go back to that for fear of it happening again.

[xcharles718]

If there's one thing that Sprint has been notoriously good at, it would be marketing...

I just hope they start allowing all devices to be activated on prepaid.

[Nickel]

[utiz4321]

Well they are looking at bring it back for the business space. Nextel must still have some cache with When Cingular bought ATT wireless since the landline ATT was still around they could use the name and sent hundreds of millions in branding for Cingular just to spent about a billion rebranding a few years later when sbc bought the rest of ATT. They did it because the ATT brand was worth more, it's the same here. The nextel brand has more value with business customers than te sprint brand or at least sprint thinks so. If it does it will only help them to bring it back so good for them.

[Rawvega]

It would sound better using "Clear Business Solutions" for their fixed 4G data solutions, why use Nextel? 

 

I'd tend to agree. Clear Business Solutions sounds clean, crisp and concise to me.

 

They should bring back the XOHM Brand Name.

 

Why? What does "XOHM" even mean anyway? What would it mean to customers?

[WiWavelength]

Calling it Nextel sounds like it could confuse people into thinking they have their direct connect back and old coverage.

 

That may not be such a bad result.  Back when SBC bought out AT&T and BellSouth, then rebranded both itself and Cingular as AT&T, plenty of people thought that AT&TWS had come back.  And many were happy about that.  Of course, they were wrong about the return of AT&TWS, but that did not necessarily matter.  As long as they were pleased with the Cingular service rebranded to AT&T, they could erroneously think that it was the doing of a revived AT&TWS.  The same could be true in this instance with Nextel, playing on the sentimental memories of the Nextel folk.

 

AJ

[JossMan]

Virgin and Boost Mobile merging makes since, I figured they would have done this months ago, but doesn't Sprint have a their own pre-paid service called Sprint As You Go?  Why would you have Sprint As You Go and Sprint Freedom when essentially they are both the same service.  I'd assume they would dump Sprint As You Go and fold everyone into Sprint Freedom just as the Virgin and Boost Mobile customers, time will tell.

[centermedic]

Everyone cries for rebranding. Sprint talks about brand consolidation and everyone cringes. If sprint can come up with a compelling business solutions package and wants to call it "nextel solutions" ... is that really any worse than the immediate paralysis that the sprint name apparently gives people? Killing boost would be silly though. Too much low end street cred....there are boost stores even in my tiny market and you actually see people using boost more often... At least killing virgin would save licensing with branson... Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk

I think this would have been a great idea if they had transitioned Nextel into this model. Rather they killed off the brand and in the process they damaged it. I dont know if this is such a great idea. On the other hand, consolidating the two pre paid brands into one makes sense.

[4GHoward]

Why? What does "XOHM" even mean anyway? What would it mean to customers?

 

I just thought it sound pretty cool.

[DsmIowaGuy]

Combining the inner city Boost dawgs with Virgin sounds like a porno waiting to happen.

 

AJ

 

AJ,      Need a "double like" button or "No Sh*t" smiley for your post !

[avb]

The new Boost/Virgin mobile would be great if Sprint allowed the Nexus 5 or a byod solution.

[lordsutch]

The Boost and Virgin brands are definitely redundant, and I'm not sure the Virgin brand has the cachet on the USA that it has in other markets (the airline, for example, barely has any presence outside a few transcon and transoceanic markets). Plus the Boost brand gives them somewhere to dump T-Mobile's ops when they ditch the T-Mobile name.

 

As for bringing back the Nextel brand, I'm a bit more ambivalent but they need to use it for something or lose the trademark at some point.

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4

[cdk]

While it makes sense combining Boost and Virgin Mobile, I am starting to think someone at SoftBank or Sprint is smoking something funny....