Q4 2013 results

[jamisonshaw125]

So when can we officially expect a turnaround for sprint? 2014 is supposed to be sprints year but I feel 2015-2016 is more appropriate

 

 

Didn't SoftBank say they have a "secret weapon" to get sprint on top?

It'll take a while for sprint to get to the "top", however, I do see Sprint turning around this year. NV 1.0 will finish mid 2014, hopefully they'll start exploding the market with  b26, and b41. Most the issues people have are not pricing, its with coverage. They just want to have LTE in every place they go like an ATT customer does. With triband, that is pretty much possible in any market sprint covers.

[IamMrFamous07]

It'll take a while for sprint to get to the "top", however, I do see Sprint turning around this year. NV 1.0 will finish mid 2014, hopefully they'll start exploding the market with  b26, and b41. Most the issues people have are not pricing, its with coverage. They just want to have LTE in every place they go like an ATT customer does. With triband, that is pretty much possible in any market sprint covers.

True. Most people I know who have AT&T and Verizon will switch to sprint but they don't want to sacrifice their overall coverage. Triband phones will definitely make a huge difference only if your area has all 3 bands deployed though

[Ascertion]

The carrier aggregation announcement. That's what's going to offer the insanely high speeds, right? (100mbps+)

 

Sent from my LG-LS980

 

 

[anthony.spina97]

So when can we officially expect a turnaround for sprint? 2014 is supposed to be sprints year but I feel 2015-2016 is more appropriate

 

 

Didn't SoftBank say they have a "secret weapon" to get sprint on top?

Well you have to look at it this way. These results are for Q4 of 2013. So, this really isn't any indication of how 2014 will be.

 

-Anthony

[JeffDTD]

Was really hoping we would get some roundabout mention or encouragement, in the transcript Q&A's, about converting Ground Mount sites to full build or about their plans to strategically grow the network in areas where expansion has been  neglected.  That absolutely was not the purpose of the reporting, but it would be encouraging none the less.  

 

With merger and acquisition talk being the elephant in the room, I assume those expectations remain vague

[4GHoward]

Was there anything mentioned about customer additions or customer losses under the CLEAR brand?

[ericdabbs]

Was there anything mentioned about customer additions or customer losses under the CLEAR brand?

 

I don't think so.  I mean Sprint doesn't call out CLEAR brand customer adds/losses and probably doesn't consider them worthy of its own category since I am sure the numbers are pretty low.  If anything it might have been folded in the mixing point of prepaid/MVNOs customers adds/losses.

[Deval]

Sprint is using hydrogen fuel cells for rooftop sites for backup power and has applied for patents regarding. Did anyone else know this???

 

Yep.

 

Little known fact, Sprint employees and as a company applied for 2 patents on average for every business day worked in the calendar year.

[Conan Kudo]

Was there anything mentioned about customer additions or customer losses under the CLEAR brand?

It's under transactions. Like the USCC customers it acquired, Sprint has been churning them out.

[runagun]

I remember Hesse once saying that its more then Vzw and Att combined.

 

Yep.

 

Little known fact, Sprint employees and as a company applied for 2 patents on average for every business day worked in the calendar year.

[Deval]

I remember Hesse once saying that its more then Vzw and Att combined.

 

Yep, for all of Sprint's faults that the world seems to crap on, the company is full of innovators. 

[digiblur]

I would like to see these patents, it did peak my interest when they mentioned it.

[Fraydog]

There doesn't seem to be that many Clear subs left. There's 53 million subs on the Sprint platform. Nextel is dead. Does that mean there's 2 million subs left on Clear?

[CrimsonKnightDX]

Im worried about q1 2014...with the tmobile contract buy offer, im going to expect a major loss

 

 

When does T-Mobile report  this?  

 

I am very interested as well. 

[lilotimz]

I'm not sure if you guys noticed but they said 5000 TDD-LTE site conversions was on air and 2000 more will be done this quarter. We already know they have over 7000 live TDD-LTE sites as of a month ago and probably almost 8000 or more by now.

 

Is this the first sign or under promise and over deliver?

[Fraydog]

I'm not sure if you guys noticed but they said 5000 TDD-LTE site conversions was on air and 2000 more will be done this quarter. We already know they have over 7000 live TDD-LTE sites as of a month ago and probably almost 8000 or more by now.

 

Is this the first sign or under promise and over deliver?

I hope so. How many POP's does that cover?

[Conan Kudo]

I hope so. How many POP's does that cover?

That depends entirely on where those sites are going. Going off of what Sprint has done so far, I wouldn't be surprised if it covers less than 50 million people.

[lilotimz]

I hope so. How many POP's does that cover?

 

Guestimating 20-30 million +-5. A lot of them appears to be in high pop and high capacity zones from my glancing at the map.

 

At least 200-400K in Sacramento alone and they're set to activate practically 4/5s of the Clearwire sites by May which puts it easily at 1 - 1.25 mil pops covered. 

[S4GRU]

I'm not sure if you guys noticed but they said 5000 TDD-LTE site conversions was on air and 2000 more will be done this quarter. We already know they have over 7000 live TDD-LTE sites as of a month ago and probably almost 8000 or more by now.

 

Is this the first sign or under promise and over deliver?

I don't think they are counting sites in CSFB problem areas. Like Samsung markets.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

 

 

[JimBob]

The change in Sprint's share price did not end the day as impressively as initially opened compared with the overall up day for markets. In fact, I would call it a disappointment; still not sure if the stock will come under further downward pressure in the short-term.

[bandwithhog]

There doesn't seem to be that many Clear subs left. There's 53 million subs on the Sprint platform. Nextel is dead. Does that mean there's 2 million subs left on Clear?

 

Not correct because Clear had about 1.5 Million Retail customers and the rest of the about 8-10 Million (considering the deactivations and LTE switches) are wholesale customers. FreedomPOP, NetZero, Karma etc are all in the wholesale bucket and Sprint or earlier Clearwire has not released any numbers.

 

The Network still has plenty of people using it and if you consider the push in the wholesale area to use WiMax until not enough hardware aka devices are left is not a bad idea. All the devices sold today are refurbished devices and considering FreedomPOP, are selling quite well.

 

Now a lot of Sprint subs are also Clear subs because of their dual CDMA/WiMax device and I guess Sprint will now count them as Sprint Platform only.

[gnoj]

It's under transactions. Like the USCC customers it acquired, Sprint has been churning them out.

 

It's sort of a moot point now, but Sprint never acquired any USCC customers- that was a common error made by the media. The sale in the Midwest last year was purely a spectrum transfer. If customers had been acquired, Sprint would have taken over their contracts and likely have had to honor their terms until they expired. USCC phones would have worked for everything but LTE and 1x800, which Chicago-area USCC customers lacked anyway.

 

Instead, USCC customers were released from their contracts (no ETFs) and free to choose any other provider they wished. If they failed to do so, their account was eventually terminated, rather than automatically transferred to Sprint. That is why there was more "churn" from them than one may otherwise expect.

[Conan Kudo]

It's sort of a moot point now, but Sprint never acquired any USCC customers- that was a common error made by the media. The sale in the Midwest last year was purely a spectrum transfer. If customers had been acquired, Sprint would have taken over their contracts and likely have had to honor their terms until they expired. USCC phones would have worked for everything but LTE and 1x800, which Chicago-area USCC customers lacked anyway.

 

Instead, USCC customers were released from their contracts (no ETFs) and free to choose any other provider they wished. If they failed to do so, their account was eventually terminated, rather than automatically transferred to Sprint. That is why there was more "churn" from them than one may otherwise expect.

Uhh, no. It was Sprint's choice to release them from their contracts. USCC did transfer the customers to Sprint. It was even in the press release.

[S4GRU]

Uhh, no. It was Sprint's choice to release them from their contracts. USCC did transfer the customers to Sprint. It was even in the press release.

It would have been unwise for Sprint not to allow USCC customers to leave since they did not offer the same coverage areas. If they had inherited the USCC network and coverages, they could have made a different play.

 

Sprint could have done more to incentivize and keep those customers. However, if the demographics weren't there, they may just have figured it was better to let many of them leave than to try to "buy" them.

 

Sprint may have been seeing this as a spectrum only transaction, and any customers gained was just gravy. Their actions sure seem to support that.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

 

 

[Conan Kudo]

It would have been unwise for Sprint not to allow USCC customers to leave since they did not offer the same coverage areas. If they had inherited the USCC network and coverages, they could have made a different play.

 

Sprint could have done more to incentivize and keep those customers. However, if the demographics weren't there, they may just have figured it was better to let many of them leave than to try to "buy" them.

 

Sprint may have been seeing this as a spectrum only transaction, and any customers gained was just gravy. Their actions sure seem to support that.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

That makes sense. Given Sprint's troubles, though, I would have figured it would have tried harder to retain these customers...