utiz4321

800 is important, but capacity is king and it always will be in wireless. Unfortunately there is not a lot of capacity with sprint 800 holdings. Speed isn't that important in the end (at least to smart phone users) but capacity is and band 41 has a ton. The capacity on band 41 is what gives sprint the edge over the competition.

Robert, I think in comparing tmobile deployment of HSDPA+ Network vision comes out heads and shoulders above that project. But that was largely done under another CEO. But back haul will be largely in place when the band 41 roll out gets going in earnest. So if we are going to compare roll outs in something like an apples to apples way we would have to compare it to tmobile lte rollout (back haul was also in place when this begain too). Here sprint's band 41 plans don't come off as well (as far as time is concerned, the network itself will be better). Now this isn't apples to apples either as sprint's plans include smalls cells and other densification aspects but it's closer. I also don't see permitting as a choke point for most places. At least it wasn't for NV and that required at least as much in permits as band 41 will. They need an NV type push with band 41 because it in conjunction with band 25 an 26 promises that consistent costumer network experience that we both agree will be the key to sprint's and every network operators success. Their current plans don't strike me as ambitious as NV and to me that is a mistake. I know you disagree but that is my thought.

I hate to.say it but he might be right. Not that sprint cant build out a network to.utilize the spectrum but with fiber to be installed in basically all their towers by the middle of this year and 10000 or so clear towers that shoukd be easy to convert, a two year roll out time to cover only the top 100 markets is lack luster in the extreme. This is especially true given where the competition is and the fact that in many markets the one 1900 carrier is being overwelhemed. We will see what their plans look like after the 11th but so far they are rather disapointing.

Studies like these are proof that Americans need more education in statistics. The spread between sprint and ATT (bottom and top) is so small that though JD power was able to get a statistically significant result (through a large sample size) the actually difference is meaningless. It's probably with in the error or not far out side of it anyway. The article's title should be JD powers finds not much difference between major carrier in..., like all their studies.

I agree and with sprint's current band 41 plans I don't see that since of urgancy.

I think so too. The US regulators seem to be insistant on 4 national carriers. It will be interesting. To see if tmobile continues their aggressive pricing or decides that they might need to become a viable company again.

Sprint started late. The roll out has not been slow. In fact it is much faster that ATT of vzw. The problem with sprint's roll out is they missed their own dead line and had to push the project completion date back 6 months. But even with this their progress has been very fast.

800 lte will help.

I think your math is off. 5 lines on framily with 3 gig cost (35+10)5=225. On the 1500 everything data 120+(30)4=240, a 15 dollar differences. But your general point is wright. The price for unlimited has gone up and really it has to. And it went up with the last plan changed sprint made. I seriously don't understand people who don't get that wireless costs are going up. We use these device more than we ever have and for more than we ever have. why should the cost remain the same., especially when we are using up more of what is a finite resource.

I think you are looking at it wrong. Since the cancele you last 12 payments they are in a sense buying the phone from you at a guaranteed price, 12xmonthly payments. If you think you can get a better price then you free to sell the phone and pay off the balance. Then to get a new phone your more than Likely going to do easy pay again (it's a better deal) so it amounts to the same thing.

They raised prices with my way plans. Sprint has been losing money and customers for years. The lower prices haven't stopped customers from leaving so they had to raise prices to steam the loss of money. They are still cheaper than the big two and still more expensive than tmobile, they are just closer to the former and further from the latter now. The only issue I have is that they continuing to charge an "upgrade" fee. Since you are not getting a subsidy it seems to me this is a financing charge now (as it only applies if you finance a device not if you BYOD). Which makes a mockery of their no finance charges claim. I fine with the fee if they want to charge it, I just not ok with them claiming no finance charges while charging the fee only when you finance the phone.

They do now. But 200 may be to high. However, I think there will be a healthy margin on cell phones as long as people can "make it part of their plans" by putting on the bill and don't have to front the cost. The wildcard might be the carriers oddly enough. They don't really care all that much about making a mark up on the device. They care about subs and that might pressure them to sell the phones closer to cost.

Could not disagree more. Regulation of this sort would only discourage the production of cheap devices and some people need cheap devices. By force every phone to support every technology and frequency you only drive the price up. It helps people who buy a high end device that don't want to bother with selling them and repurchasing a new device, but hurt people with low end handsets (ie people who don't care about phones or poor people), not my idea of fair. The nexus 5 and iPhone are out there for people for whom this matters and as long as there is a segment of the consumer base that wants a phone that can move between carriers the phones will get made, no regulation required. It may not be the phone you want but well that is why you have choices.

According to the best guesses I have seen the 5s cost 200 to build. Add shipping cost and a 60 percent mark up (low apple probably will mark up over 80, just a guess though) that puts best buying the phone for around 350-375. Given that best buy makes any where between 200 and 400 per contract they light up (old and approximate numbers) and assuming they won't want to see a major hit, the entry level iPhone 5s should run about 550 at best buy off contract. And I think that is where it will end up.

It depends on the plan you look at. On the everything data plans the savings are marginal on the framily plans. With the max framily tier and five lines on everything data it's 45 vs 48 per line. But it is clear sprint wanted to raise prices and did so with their my way plans. When you compare these plans with framily the savings are more substantial. Further these plans give people who don't use much data more options so they are a bit more flexible. Either way these plans keep sprint right where they have been with regards to price, higher than tmobile but lower than ATT and verizon and I think that is where they want to be.

Yeah, welcome to the world where you pay for your mobile device. It is much like the world where you pay for your car, tv or anything else. If you move to the middle of SF or New York and the car your financing becomes impractical you sell it and move on with your life.

They can change prices but you are free to leave.

You pay for the phone subsidy in the price of the plan. So really all this is doing is making what was implicitly built into the plan explicit.

I do not work for sprint, but they have not announced the end to subsidies. Further, because you finance the phone it doesn't mean that you do not own the phone any more than buying gas on a credit card means that you don't own the gas. You do not need to turn in your phone to get an upgrade and you can sell your phone at any point. You still owe the amount that you agreed to pay for the phone until that is paid, that is the only implication of financing a phone.

Unless your an investor.

There is no ecosystem for rev B. All going to rev B will do for sprint will make the cost of handsets go up for them. The faster evdo data will not be a big gain as their entire network will have lte.

Umm... If this is referring to lte we are going to need a dramtic pickup in the number of acceptance.

Do you have a link to the interview or an article in which what he said was discussed. I have been unable to find anything about it.

I think the cues we get in the fourth quarter and year end earnings call will be very instructive. We should get a glimps in to managements mind set.

This is almost exactly the way I feel about he sprint's management team. It seems to me that have this idea that they could just trend water until NV was complete and the industry is simply moving to fast. This is especially true on the offerings and customer service end of things. This might have been ok if they had managed to stick to the original NV time table and NV 1.0 was largely complete today. In one sense I understand their thought process, they don't want to ramp up offers and marketing to have people switch to a network that is going to leave a bad tast in their mouths. But they should have and should be doing more to get a head of their competition and not just follow the industry lead. One place I do give tmobile credit is they have been reducing (or appearing to) consumers pain points and no one can really argue that it hasn't paid off for them in the short run. Sprint could learn a lot from tmobile on this end (not on the network side, except maybe in the since of urgency of getting ahead of the competition, I.e a more ambitious 2.5 deployment). They need to find and reduce their customers pain point because enduring the network upgrades is a massive one sprint can't really do anything about other than execute on NV. The plan was for NV was a good one (the reAson I stay with sprint really) but execution has been poor. Which is a shame because I think Hesse and co have done just about as good as anyone mitigating the disaster that was the nextel merger. Ps what is the problem with SF anyway. What is causing NV progress to be so slow there, if you know? (I am from that part of the world lol).