irev210

If anything, it brings about accountability. Feelings are rather irrelevant in the scheme of things. Angry, happy, sad, not sure why people put as much emotion into it as they do. Any organization that can't hold employees accountable lacks organizational control and can't have predictable outcomes. Changing the ranks has two advantages in this situation. 1) The organization sets the expectation that failure of established/agreed upon goals is unacceptable. 2) Opportunity arises for new members of the organization to take established/agreed upon goals and are held accountable. We'll see how this shakes out. Dan Hesse said that he wanted to under-promise, over-deliver back in 2008. Let's see if that's the case in 2014 and onward.

You should notice a very nice boost in LTE reception with the n5 over the s3... Should make you a happier sprint customer.

Saw this on my drive into work today!

The whole thing stinks - it makes me furious. Comcast gobbles up NBC, good move to prevent IPTV from taking off... Now, Comcast gobbles up Timewarner as rumors of an apple/timewarner tie-up? One of things that I love about where I live is that I have a choice between RCN Cable and Comcast. I love being able to switch between the two.

That's actually good to know - I had no idea T-Mobile Nexus 5 IMEIs were not loaded into sprint. Sprint/Google should support all model D820's - less customer confusion.

Yeah that was back right when they came out. Sprint was actually on the ball and resolved the issue within 48 hours. Early adopter pains.

I would just get a Nexus 5 now. The LTE performance is so good, you will be missing out on a LOT but not really gaining much. Really, the next big step in SoCs won't be until late 14 when Qualcomm goes 20nm. For the radio performance alone, I wouldn't suffer another day with any other sprint handset - the nexus 5 is just too good.

The big question is - what's going to happen to churn once they seed more Band 26 devices and fully fire up band 26 in shentel service area? I bet we'll see it drop to 1.5%, then trend down to 1.1-1.4% assuming plans remain competitively priced.

with the newer modems that are coming out, speeds are going to get even faster. We are talking about 16x4 and 24x8 - that's a LOT of bonded channels!

Oh man - this brings back a lot of miserable memories.

Nope

That is one of the more interesting questions that only time will answer. I am sure we are not the only ones wondering if T-Mobile's churn is going to escalate when they are xfering subs from substantially larger carriers with substantially larger coverage footprints - TBD one that. In the meantime, relavent to Softbank/Sprint - it definitely changes the valuation of T-Mobile today, impacting what Son will offer. That's how this all comes together. Son, at that point, can do what he did in Japan - KDDI and NTT vs. Softbank or in the USA AT&T and VZN vs. SprintSon

For Son - it's a risk/reward scenario. I suspect that they'll be confident they can get the deal done before moving forward - likely with some significant spectrum divests and other accommodations to the DOJ (similar to how US AIR and AA just gave away a bunch of gates at Dulles and LGA). Deval - what you are saying goes against what reality is. Churn and margins are improving, not decreasing. They're becoming a more valuable carrier with the actions they've taken. This is likely causing Son to be ticked off, as it is jacking up the acquisition cost of T-Mobile. Deutsche Telekom was just bragging about how T-Mobile is back to the level at which AT&T tried to acquire them. Given the current market, I suspect Son is trying to move quickly in a rising rate environment combined with a company that is growing its enterprise value rather quickly.

Oh, you are nuts. VZN would love the deal because they would target PCS and/or AWS. Son is going to make an offer for T-Mobile purely for the subs and marketing. I am sure Son sees the potential of Sprint+T-Mobile to offer the scale needed to take on VZN/AT&T and prevent a price war blowing up between S/TMUS - Win-Win for Son. I don't think this is good for consumers because we'll be basically left with two choices - AT&T/VZN or Sprint. Sprint will always be priced JUST below AT&T/VZN (which are priced right on top of each other). That will become the status quo and the recent spat of price wars, plan innovations, etc will abruptly end. So, VZN and AT&T will continue their 40+% margins and Sprint will be happy in 3rd place at 35% margins. Bottom line, a merger would be a huge lose for consumers which makes me really wonder what they'll have to do to get the DOJ to approve it. Maybe T-Mobile is extremely smart, negotiate another awesome breakup fee and collect another billion in cash to build out their new A block spectrum once the merger faces too many regulatory hurdles to clear.

Personally, I don't think insurance offers any value. The prices they charge are just insane. I'd rather just buy a used Nexus 5 off eBay and call it a day if my phone breaks.

No specific plans announced - sort of interesting this popped up today. Magenta For More People T-Mobile's next frontier is to expand its overall network to more Americans. The company started by focusing on major cities, and it now covers 66 percent of the population with LTE and about 73 percent with HSPA+. If the rest of the population gets T-Mobile at all, it's on 2G EDGE. That's been the No. 1 complaint my readers have had about T-Mobile; the 88 million or so Americans who can't get high-speed access on the carrier's plans are often pretty angry about it. That's bigger than the population of the U.K. or France. "We haven't been talking about building new cell sites in a long while," Ray admitted. "The story for '14 is more footprint," he said. With 317 million Americans out there, the scrappy No. 4 carrier has its work cut out for it. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2429285,00.asp

I think it's a very exciting time for Sprint. I think Son will set a new expectation at Sprint. I still remember Dan Hesse when original network vision came around - he said "We are going to under promise and over deliver." I can't imagine the challenges of completely rebuilding a network from scratch but at the end of the day, it's your job as CEO to make sure that you have the right people and make sure they have the tools to accomplish their job. Set the expectation and hold people accountable - that works too. Maybe Steve Elfman isn't the right guy for the job. I don't know any of the answers, I will say Dan has done a great job laying a foundation for the possibility of great success. Their spectrum position is unmatched in the industry - they just need to execute. Maybe they shouldn't be doing any marketing right now and invest it in their network. When the network is rebuilt - go bonanza on the biggest marketing push ever.

Yeah, it was my poor attempt at sarcasm. I think it's going to be a few years before anything comes about of A block. I like what AJ suggested - have them team up with rural A block license holders and get some roaming agreements going.

On this one, you made me laugh out loud. As is the job of the CEO. Get blamed when things are bad, get props when things are good. Could T-Mobile be doing better if someone else was running the show? Maybe. Philipp Humm wasn't doing T-Mobile any favors (though props for having Cathrine Zeta Jones as the spokeswoman). Look at HP: Carly Fiorina Mark Hurd Leo Apotheker Meg Whitman Yahoo Jerry Yang Marissa Mayer MSFT lately... and Apple. or Alan Mulally... While each CEO is not responsible for hatching a marketing idea (perhaps Jobs was) but when you have examples like those listed above, you can't say they don't impact the way a company operates. Even companies like HP with very established cultures and divisions have been extremely influenced by what CEO was running the show at the time.

Come on now - they just bought some A block. We can say that about T-Mobile now In some parts of the country, where there is no channel 51 issues, and you have the right handset, we will have great coverage at some point, hopefully!

Yeah, that's why I've been so amazed at churn falling and am very curious to watch churn as they port out 2-to-1 against AT&T. We are talking many compatible handsets, port offers from both carriers, etc. It will be a VERY interesting year for 2014. There are very few barriers for a customer to switch - this will definitely help identify how consumers feel about ATT and T-Mobile. Sprint T-Mobile VZN ATT 12Q3 2.1 2.3 0.9 1.1 12Q4 2.2 2.5 1.0 1.2 13Q1 2.1 1.9 1.0 1.0 13Q2 2.6 1.6 0.9 1.0 13Q3 2.1 1.7 1.0 1.1

BGR article was great. For all intensive purposes, you could argue with Verizon owning more than 50% of postpaid subs, they already have put everyone out of business. Sprint at 10.3% and T-Mobile at 7.5% are just so far back. When you have metrics like VZN, why would they lower their prices? They have no problem enticing customers to join their network at current pricing and customers don't leave. It has nothing to do with shareholders - when you have a premium product that people are willing to pay more for and refuse to leave for cheaper alternatives, you price it accordingly. VZN is just doing what they do. We can poke fun at T-Mobile (as T-Mobile does at Sprint "Sparky") but churn is churn, gross margin is gross margin, etc. I think you can get to a point where people are willing to compromise on some things (less coverage for cheaper price, slower data for better coverage, or best coverage for higher price, etc). I think T-Mobile should just cater to urban customers who want value, selection, and speed and don't care about coverage. At the end of the day, T-Mobile is doing two things correctly right now 1) customers are happy with the service as churn is very low for postpaid t-mobile customers (particularly since there is no contract tied to the service) and 2) Their disruptive marketing is getting a ton of gross adds (low churn, high gross adds = good net adds). With no contract and the ability to port many devices back to AT&T, it's amazing their port ratio is 2-1 from AT&T. To me, that's absolutely mind blowing. The coverage issue is a really interesting topic. Right now, as it stands, their churn is really good, which indicates that customers that are using T-Mobile are happy. The big question will be - how will churn change with all these new customers porting from AT&T? They've made huge strides in reducing churn, so it makes me wonder.

It's actually a really smart strategy to acquire subs. As I mentioned in my previous post, they still have the margins to do it. It sounds like a lot of money up front but it's actually not relative to what T-Mobile views as the customer lifetime value. For example, say you have 1.7% churn, that means the customer lifetime value is about 5 years. T-Mobile is offering up to $650 per customer but that's only in the most ideal scenario. ETFs are pro-rated, so figure the average customer has a 1 year old phone and is 1 year through their contract. Say that's about 200 for the ETF and 150 for the phone. The total payment to the customer is 350 over 5 years, or $11.66 a month. Their postpaid plans are fairly pricey and profitable, they have no problem eating the $11.66/month cost per sub to offer this promotion. Bottom line, while it sounds like a lot of money, it's actually not, and they don't need to bet the farm to offer this promotion.

At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is the data, and the data shows that TMUS is being very disruptive right now. The net adds are downright amazing. If you would have told me that T-Mobile would be behind VZN on net adds by the end of 2013, I would have said craziness! Look at how defensive AT&T was with the un-carrier 4.0 move. Look at Sprint with Framily - offering customers plans without buying a subsidized device soon. All of these innovations have been a positive for the entire industry, which I think what is important for us sprint users and all mobile users. Regardless of what we think of Legere, he has, without a doubt, been an absolute catalyst for the wireless industry to change. It will take years to see if it was for better/worse (and a lot of TBD on S/TMUS merger - they are two very different cultures, which reminds me of Sprint/Nextel). On a side note, Sprint is finally superior to T-Mobile in Boston again, and they haven't even fired up Band 26 LTE yet! Given some recent trips I've had on the east coast, I forgot how painful the old sprint is (vast stretches of interstate on 1x, unusable data, etc). Churn, which has ticked up over 2.0% (higher than Sprint PREPAID churn!!!!) is an issue and T-Mobile is capitalizing on the opportunity, which is making Sprint/Softbank feel the competitive pressure, which is a good thing! Considering what TMUS margins are vs. Sprint, they definitely have the room to be more competitive. Lower ARPU, higher margin (16.5% for S 3Q13 vs 26.2% for TMUS). While this is nothing compared to ATT at 42% and VZN at 51.1%, I love the room TMUS has to create additional competitive headwinds. Regardless of how lame the pink shirt is, how crappy rural coverage can be, or anything else, I don't understand why people are unhappy with the progress T-Mobile has made. It will make Sprint better, Verizon better, and AT&T better - so regardless if T-Mobile works for you as a carrier or not, you still benefit - and isn't that what it's all about?

Every year, I look forward to the Renesys blog that ranks internet providers. It looks like Sprint has picked up a lot of transit from softbank - glad to see softbank taking advantage of sprintlink. Sprint (AS 1239), which has been steadily declining in our rankings for years, showed surprising signs of life late in the year. In part, this was due to increased transit from Japan’s #2 ranked provider, Softbank Telecom (AS 4725). http://www.renesys.com/2014/01/bakers-dozen-2013-edition/