MacinJosh

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Wouldn't the 3rd party retailer (i.e. BestBbuy) have to do the price matching, since Sprint is selling it for $150 cheaper?

Why would they? I tend to believe that Sprint is willing to allow these mass retailers the ability to sell these products at certain price points because Sprint knows that their buyers are locked in to payment agreement for 24 months. The retailers paid the up-front cost to advertise the deals - and thus the Sprint product. Sprint now has these subscribers,old or new, on their books and locked into these agreements. This gives Sprint a guaranteed incomes stream with a minimal outlay of cash. If the buyer changes their provider then the buyer has to pay off the portion of the contract that was yielded to the mass retailer - so there is no real loss to Sprint. This system works less so with iPhones, but for other phone providers it should work well.

 

Sprint is also betting on their ability to retain the majority of these contracts via improved service, etc. It'll be a waiting game to see if their bet pays off.

How about when the 3rd party retailer is selling at an 80% discount over Sprint? Would Sprint then consider price matching? I want to take my new LTE device and test in LA on the 26th and maybe even have it for this Saturday if I go down there.

Sprint officially launching ICS on the EVO 3D in June!!

 

http://phandroid.com...ng-out-in-june/

So then the EVO Design 4G ICS update isn't far behind. How exciting.

victory party

open house

My guess would be that Sprint is lightly subsidizing the $549.99 off-contract price (although they probably make a net profit after the $36 activation charge) but that the $699.99 off-contract price at Best Buy includes a hefty margin, in part to make their on-contract price look better. As for the 3rd party carriers undercutting the two-year price from Sprint, my understanding is that they get a cut of your monthly bill through the contract period in addition to an up-front "prebate" from Sprint for new activations; if BB or Wirefly is going to get several hundred bucks from you indirectly over 24 months, they'll gladly throw $50-100 at you to buy from them as opposed to going to Sprint directly.

So would Sprint be willing to price match so that the other company doesn't get that extra money?

I know AT&T still offers the service but they don't seem to advertise it openly. You have to have a business account to even get it. But yes it is there. I believe it is the same with VZW.

Then Sprint could make a killing in the PTT market with this app.

It doesn't take a great leap of the imagination to see that happening. I would imagine Sprint even going as far as allowing other carrier's phones to install the app provided they pay the monthly fee. It could be a good revenue generator if it takes off in that way.

It would be a good revenue generator now that as far as I can tell, at&t and vzw don't have ptt services anymore. Vzw may, but I don't see it offered at at&t anymore.

Yeah something like that. I just thought it was a such smaller time period.

It sure does seem like that now, doesn't it? It's because it was so many years ago already.

Really? I think that might have been by market. I remember here in my area, the notices went out and the network was shutdown/forced migration very rapidly.

The TDMA shutdown occured over a 2 month period, but was completed in March of 2008, or was it 2007? I can't remember which year. But from the very onset of the merger, they were trying hard to convert all TDMA customers to GSM devices. The advertisements came 2-4 times per month for like 2 years. I can't recall how many I shredded before I just gave up and threw them away instead.

Interesting...which means they could potentially roll all the Metro customers to Straight Talk, and capture that spectrum for other usage.

 

On another note, does anyone remember the AT&T Wireless and Cingular takeover back in the day? At that time, AT&T was running a TDMA network natively on their 800mhz (if I remember correctly), and building out a GSM network using their 1900mhz spectrum. When Cingular took over, they basically notified all AT&T Wireless customers that their TDMA devices would be dead in the water at date XXXX.

 

I can see something like that happening here.

Actually, Cingular was still running a remnant of TDMA subscribers themselves when they took over AT&T wireless. But that merger happened in October 2004. The shutdown of TDMA didn't happen until 2007 or 2008. I had a friend on TDMA AT&T wireless up until 4 months before the TDMA shutdown when she finally migrated to GSM

http://www.fiercewireless.com/ctialive/story/sprint-counts-600000-femtocells-plans-update-airave/2012-05-09

The article linked above mentions new Airave's that support EVDO on 800, but for some reason they left out whether it will support LTE or not. So now we know that Sprint wants to upgrade the Airave, but they won't detail data capabilities.

Now I wonder how long it will be before we see this become an iPhone app as well?

They are betting everything on it. Sprint has to retain a very high percentage of those OG EVO customers coming off contract. If they retained EVO customers at the same rate as Nextel customers, that would be very, very bad. Cash flow, cash flow, cash flow is what Sprint is banking all their plans on. Any deviation to that could be catastrophic.

 

Robert

We don't need no Catastrophes with Sprint right now. And they sure made a good move to release the device one month sooner than originally planned. The original EVO purchasers were eligible for upgrades last month or sooner.

Multi-mode components is a stretch. However, it does appear to be true they will be the first to deploy integrated radios (combined RRU/Panel assemblies). They are quite stellar to look at the mockups from Ericsson below. Those are so hot, I would hang them in my living room!

 

Robert

 

I would love to have speakers that look like those in my living room. Awesome design.

Robert or someone else capable of answering this question, I have read awhile back ( can't remember where though) that with NV upgrade they were putting something closer to the receiver antenna that was normally on the ground with the main equipment. The logic was that it would minimize signal loss and actually improve signal strength quite a bit being up on the tower itself. Is this so and what was it exactly just to refresh my memory?

 

If this is the case then I can't wait for my towers in Charlotte, NC receive the NV upgrades. I am more concerned with Voice coverage more than anything at the house.

Remote Radio Units, or RRU's, is what was talked about many times here on this site.

With numbers like that, it makes me want to get one! Although, as close as I live to a site, it could be one quarter of the EVO and I'd still be fine.

 

Robert

Lucky you. You could have the worst device in the entire Sprint line up and still get decent service thanks to that tower right out in front of your house.

Guys, the Phone Scoop maps produced following the 2006 auction are easier to use. And I am hesitant to encourage use of the sequence-omega.net site, as limitations in its data gathering and mapping techniques cause certain licenses to be mapped inaccurately.

 

AJ

Not to mention, my internet connection doesn't let me use that site 90% of the time.

open door

biting fly

How many customers would the combined company have if they did merge?

fire light

Unless Netflix is willing to change it's billing system and only charge customers on those carriers that have toll free data, then I don't think it should be done. No sense punishing all of us for the crazy ideas of the 3 carriers that cancelled true unlimited data plans.

This is an interesting turn of events in the wireless playing field.