utiz4321

Sure, let me just turn to my manager and ask him if the old plans are still available.

 

Well, what do you know, they are. Yes, we're supposed to push the new plans first for new customers. No, they are not required.

 

Wait, what? I literally just gave you quotes from Hesse himself, as quoted in the Wall Street Journal, posting evidence against what you said. Instead of countering with your own evidence, you write it off and ignore it, for the sole reason that it disagrees with you - and then just repeat the same thing you already said.

 

Don't let the facts get in the way of your opinions.

 

(as an aside, Sprint isn't forcing anyone off Unlimited. Sprint isn't forcing anyone off anything right now. No other carrier ever guaranteed unlimited "for life". The reason for the "Unlimited Guarantee" is that consumers have lived through VZW and ATT destroy unlimited and force them off - it gives Sprint an even stronger market position by saying "come to us and you can have it forever".)

I have called four stores in my area all of them pushed me into the new plans and didn't give me the option for the old ones even when i threaten to walk. You can not get them online. If they are that hard to get for an informed consumer they not avalible to the average one for all intents and purposes. Hesse can spin this how he wants, but bottom line is if SoftBank had a problem with these new plans they wouldn't have happened. If you think it still could have happened with out SoftBanks approval then you should spend sometime learning how coroprate governance works. But hey everything that companies tell their employees in 100 percent true and not self serving at all, right.

 

Also vzw and AT&T have not forced any of their customers off unlimited data. The might have not offered certain services with unlisted data like FaceTime or handset subsidies , but none of their customers are forced to leave unlimited data. I have never claimed people are being forced off the old plans, so why you keep bring that up is beyond me.

 

I have like Hesse since he took over and have been with sprint for 9years, even while I worked for other carriers. I was very excited about this merger. I am less so now because of these new plans that at the very least receive tacit support from softbank.

Further sprint doesn't say that they grantee unlimited data and hand set subsidies for life did they? So they could still pull the samething vzw has done or that all service will be avalible, so they can still do the thing AT&T has done.

You can disagree all you want, but...

 

1) This isn't Softbank's "First Move".

 

 

source: http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20130711-709190.html

 

 

 

2) The reasoning was closing the Clearwire deal, not Softbank.

 

 

source: same article

 

 

 

3) The "old" plans have NOT been "ditched". The new plans are NOT mandatory. New customers can still sign up for the "old" plans, without restriction.

Call a sprint store tell them you are new and see what they say (I did it with four) or better try to sign up for the old plans online as a new customer. SoftBank has final say, if they thought this was a bad idea or hindered their plans it would not have gone forward. Hesse is being a bit self serving by saying the clear closer was the reason. It fits niecely with sprints contention that the unlimited garrentee is a value proposition (i dont think it is as sprint would be the only carrier to force people off unlimited. in affect all other carriers have an unlimited garantee by the way they have acted) while allowing them to ignore that this is indeed a price hike. In other words coroprate propaganda. Buy it if you want to buy it, but I will not. Action speak louder than words. This is softbank's first move, hopefully they can provide some really value to justify the price rise (like a network that is better than Verizon or AT&T) or I think this investment of theirs will fail.

Softbank had little to nothing to do with these plans. Sprint's had them cooking for a while, while Softbank was "aware" of them. As these plans aren't required, and have things like "The Unlimited Guarantee" slapped on, and being largely made so that customers can compare ATT/VZW plans side-by-side, Softbank still has plenty of room to maneuver ways to be competitive - and if they so choose, undercut the Big Two, whether that be new plans or otherwise.

I couldn't disagree more. I don't think sprint launches a whole new set of plans, ditching the old ones (for new customers) a few days after the deal closes with out softbank's approval. Sprint and SoftBank have been working closely since the deal was accepted by sprint's board (at least according to sprint and SoftBank). This can and should be seen as softbank's first move and it is not impressive.

I am less optimistic about this merger now than I was a week ago. the new plans tell me that they don't get what it is going to take to grow market share in the US. hopefully I am wrong.

I'd say their goal isn't just revenue, it's profit from each customer (or at least not losing money on them). If people having 3,4, and 5 smart phones on these everything plans takes them from being profitable at 2 lines, to money losers at 4-5 lines, then I expect Sprint to raise it's prices on the additional smart-phone lines accordingly. That sucks for those of us with 3-5 smart-phones on a plan, but I understand why they would do it.

The goals are profits overall, as for any company. Many companies use "lost leaders"(products they make little or no money off of) in their marketing strategies. Again wireless companies don't care about making a profit off each per say they care about the spread between cash cost per user and average revenue per user. This is how these companies increase oibda and thus the bottom line. Any wire less company would gladly offer a service that they lose 10 bucks a month on if it ment they would gain 100. It is a flat out price increase on new customers which I believe is bad timing and they will end up having to back track on. Also, I wasn't expecting the SoftBank purchase to be followed by price hikes.

I believe this is what is going on. Sprint has realized they do not make money on the additional lines (3+ lines) for the Everything plans. They may even lose money. Every additional line I add to my account is only $30 per month, and they give me a subsidized phone too for these additional lines. So they get a 2 year contract on that line, but they also give me $400 on a smartphone. So there is not much left over to make money after you pay for the phone.

 

Sprint has decided to stop the gravy train for additional lines. Did it make Sprint a very attractive bargain for us folks who wanted to keep adding accounts? Yes indeed. It was almost crazy for me to not add additional lines, they were virtually free after two devices. After subsidies, I was paying $15 per month roughly for an unlimited data smartphone plan on additional lines. And often, these additional users are the biggest data users on the network. I know my kids use far more data than I do.

 

So Sprint is saying, we want these additional lines to pay their fair share. This is not greed. And each one of us who have a lot of lines (me included) are going to have to decide if this is the best deal for us. However, Sprint is stopping the welfare roll for additional lines. It may hurt them with business lost, however, when the balance sheet comes down to the end, I bet they make more money even losing customers. Because these customers are probably costing them money. SoftBank is not stupid. This is a well calculated event.

 

We need to pay our fair share for large accounts, or go somewhere else. It's just that simple. However, I don't plan to do a darn thing until they force me to migrate. And currently they are not forcing migrations. And we have store employees in this thread who have said you can still come into their stores and get the Everything plans. But I bet you can expect to try to be sold the new plans, and may even be mistakenly told you have to. Count on that.

 

Robert

For wireless companies it is all about arpu (average revenue per user). It doesn't matter to them is one line is ten bucks and another is 200 what matters is the average. They want to increase that average like all carriers do. The problem is that they also need to grow market share and to try to increase arpu through a price rise is counter productive to that goal (especially when they don't have the value proposition of a quality network). Besides they already have one of the highest post paid ARPUs of any of the carriers at 61 and some change (I pretty sure only AT&T is higher, could be wrong through). So I don't think this move makes any sense, but they have people looking at forecasts and projections with a lot more data thean me so I sure they think they see something I don't. It doesn't mean it's there, but it could be. The really depressing thing was that the hope was the SoftBank purchase brought with it the hope of increase price competition and shortly after it was finalized it turn out to be the opposite case.

This is seriously a bad move on sprint's part. It breaks down as a price rise (for new customers) while their network is not competitive (and won't be until NV is complete sometime in the first quarter of next year). Now they are actually more expensive than most of AT&T and vzw plans for a family of five and many plans for family of 3 or more

They got a way with raising prices once but that was only because they where still cheaper (for the most part) than vzw and AT&T. I don't see how this is a plan to grow market share.

 

Until now I have had a great deal of faith in sprint's leadership team (considering what they have been able to do given where the company was at when Hesse took over) but now I seriously have to question their thinking and ability to turn sprint into a competitive company. Until they have a competitive network they have to compete on price.

Sprint just lost 5 port in phones from AT&T. I was recommending my sister-in-law and her family switch to Sprint from AT&T for better pricing and service. They agreed and just waiting for them to be out of contract this month. I was planning on using the EPRP that is the same My Family is on.

 

Yesterday, I logged on and showed them the plan and even went through everything up to the point of checking out. The MRC was $204.96 plus taxes and fees which was acceptable.

 

Today the EPRP is gone even though it is still shown and described all over that website but when you start shopping the New Unlimited My Way plan is the only option. So I went ahead and again entered the same phones and required data as I had done yesterday and the MRC is now $310.00 plus taxes and fees, not acceptable.

 

This wasn't a good idea but they were willing to do it. This is just terrible timing on Sprints part IMHO. Yes I know it may be a good deal for individual lines but for a family it isn't. You are committing to a 2 year lock using phones that are NOT tri-band for NV best use and NV is at 50% complete (counting towers) at best. It is non-existent in Ohio for the most part still, just like WIMAX was.

 

Not off to a good start for Sprint-Softbank-Clearwire. Sprint's lost they are going to JUMP to T-Mobile and after 12 years I believe I will do the same next year when my contracts expire.

Yeah, I just went into my local sprint store and only the new plans are avalible for new customers. This is a terrible idea in my opinion. But as far as your sister in law going to tmobile if they want unlimited data, after financing the phone they are at the same price.

Well, it's nice they try to warn you first before hitting you with massive roaming fees.

 

I to listen to Pandora at night from time to time. It usually adds around 200 to 300 mb of useage per night, so I am sure he went pretty far over the 300mb limit.

 

Sent from my HTCONE using Tapatalk 4 Beta

They won't hit you with massive roaming fees, they don't charge for roaming. They can and will cancel your service, but only in rare cases where you are over their limit on average for three months. And that rule is not even hard and fast, I think they evaluate the overall value of your account and do a cost benefit analysis in making that choice.

I think people complaining that sprint is no longer offering true unlimited because of the fact that sprint reserves the right to throttle video streaming to 1mbps on high traffic towers and times are way off base. First plans are still available that don't have that stipulation. Second, it's more a kin to network management that limiting unlimited data. Other carriers that instituted throttling have done so after a certain amount of data has been used for a month and can therefore be seen as a constraint on the amount of high speed data used. Where as sprint is reserving the right to limit on activity at times when there network is under strain. It therefore doesn't impose a limit on the amount of high speed data which one can use. In any case if a tower is having capacity issues your speed slows down anyway (as any sprint data customer should know). So in affect you get throttled by exhausting the capacity of a given tower, sprint is just trying to control one activity in order to make sure everyone data doesn't slow down to .05 mbps like happens know. Lastly, while one mbps might not allow you to stream hd video you can still stream pretty high quality video easily, so I could careless about this provision.

Sprint has been emphasizing that "truly" unlimited means no throttling. They didn't say "except for video"

What Robert is saying and for the life of me I can't understand why people don't get this, is that if you stick with the current plans or elect to go with one of these plans for new customers you are on a plan that is truly unlimited. If you elect to go with one of the new plans you are not on a truly unlimited plan but because sprint offers both it means they offer truy unlimited data and therefor are a truly unlimited data carrier. Seriously it is really basic logic.

It's a perfectly logical assumption from reading the press release and the FAQ that was linked. The language refers to new customers and existing customers who switch. Plus, history of wireless companies tells us that when new plans are introduced they're done because the company wants you to be on them. They are designed to generate more revenue for the Company. You start by making new customers or existing customers activating new lines sign up for the new more profitable plans then slowly push the existing base off the old plans and onto the new ones as their contracts come up for renewal. Just because they haven't come clean and said it today doesn't mean they won't say it tomorrow. Probably with very little fanfare.

 

In summation: I'll believe when I don't see it.

It really doesn't make sense. If sprint were going to only offer these plans to new customers they would have said so when they announce the plans like vzw did.

My option is to have them cover the city properly. I can understand roaming in rural areas but roaming inside the city limits of the capital city of state? Hmmm.. .. Not my problem, they decided to not locate on a site there.

Depends on which states some state capitals are small towns compared to the major cities in the state. ( Washington state comes to mind, Olympia has 50000 people in it.)

Sprint's pricing doesn't work like that.

 

Line 1 is $50, +$30 for Unlimited Data.

Line 2 is $40, +$30 for Unlimited Data.

Line 3 is $30, +$30 for Unlimited Data.

Line 4 and 5 are $20 each ($40), +$30 each (+$60) for Unlimited Data.

 

That's a total of $310. So $100 more than T-Mobile's plan.

 

On the plus side, you can go all the way up to 10 lines for that $50 each...

Ah I think I did miss read it but if you take into account the financing of phones tmobile comes out to the same.

The headline of this thread is that these plans are to take on T-Mobile, but if someone wants 5 lines these plans are $100/mo more expensive than T-Mobile's plans.

How do you mean 20*5+30*5=250 sprint

Tmobile 50+30+10*3+20*5=210 apples to apples

My contract just ended today! But I'm being prudent with money, saving for new roof, etc. Sep 2014 is when I'll start being responsible for 3 lines instead of just my own. And, if current prices hold, I'll switch to TMO. Best value for 3 lines, if they have coverage where you're located, though the whole "block roaming on ATT even where we have no 2G" is retarded.

I do hope, though, that Sprint be at least be no more than $15/month more than TMO so I can justify it Sprint. I'd love to play around with PRLs.

I was lookin at tmobile for a while also, but there plans didn't work out to be cheaper when you factored in either financing the cost of the phones or buy them out right. Tmobile was 50 +30+ 10 then another 30 to have 2 gigs of 4g or 60 to have unlimited 4g (after that down to edge speeds) which either way is cheaper than the 180 with sprint but then the phones where 400 more each. That is 1200 over two years that adds 50 ( with out a discount rate, the idea that money today is worth more than money tomorrow) to the bill if I bought them out right our 60 if I financed them. That brought the price of tmobile's plans to 170 for 2 gigs a line or 200 for unlimited 4g. So, more if you compare apples to apples.

My contract just ended today! But I'm being prudent with money, saving for new roof, etc. Sep 2014 is when I'll start being responsible for 3 lines instead of just my own. And, if current prices hold, I'll switch to TMO. Best value for 3 lines, if they have coverage where you're located, though the whole "block roaming on ATT even where we have no 2G" is retarded.

I do hope, though, that Sprint be at least be no more than $15/month more than TMO so I can justify it Sprint. I'd love to play around with PRLs.

I was lookin at tmobile for a while also, but there plans didn't work out to be cheaper when you factored in either financing the cost of the phones or buy them out right. Tmobile was 50 +30+ 10 then another 30 to have 2 gigs of 4g or 60 to have unlimited 4g (after that down to edge speeds) which either way is cheaper than the 180 with sprint but then the phones where 400 more each. That is 1200 over two years that adds 50 ( with out a discount rate, the idea that money today is worth more than money tomorrow) to the bill if I bought them out right our 60 if I financed them. That brought the price of tmobile's plans to 170 for 2 gigs a line or 200 for unlimited 4g. So, more if you compare apples to apples.

Let's just say it is BOTH. AT&T is king in south Louisiana. Sprint's entire network down here in the Lafayette area went offline Monday. Sprint customers had NO service from 10am Monday throughout the day and many are still without service now on Wednesday... and no one knows why. Some folks did get a $10 bill credit, though.

 

The local television news teams ran with it as their top story... And in other news, AT&T went live with their LTE here yesterday. No kidding. Now back to you...

 

 

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Unfortunately these type of service outages happen with every carrier.

That is not really rebranding, just marketing.

 

AJ

Not to quibble (ok maybe a little) but rebranding is just marketing in any case lol

Motley fool is really bad even as a site dedicated to investor, at least when it comes to sprint. From sprint's rises ~2.50 to 7 dollars they where saying dont by sprint might go bankrupt and was going nowhere. Now they are recommending people get into the stock I am worried about sprint's future lol

Rebranding from Sprint Nextel to just Sprint?

 

AJ

New sprint..... One with out the negative reputation and a broken data network.

So, should they wait until NV is completed or start rebranding right away?

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-06-27/fcc-chief-asks-agency-to-approve-softbank-bid-for-sprint-1

 

Looks like sprint/SoftBank/clear is a done deal. And I read another article that quotes source familiar with the matter there will be no spectrum divestiture.

Does anybody have a good idea of how long it will take sprint to rollout 2.5 widely? I know clear itself is suppose to have 2000 site ready to go by the end of the year, any chance sprint might beat that number?

Why would Dish bid for the spectrum, besides driving the price for Sprint? How about Sprint driving the price up for Dish?

 

PCS H is power limited, which means that coverage will be limited as well. Why would Sprint want it? If they need coverage limited spectrum, they have Clearwire's.

I thought it was the lower end of dish's existing spectrum that the FCC imposed power limitations on. Sprint would want it to have nation wide 10x10 lte.