Duffman

I say Airave has only one "r" and you say it has two. We will just have to agree to disagree.

I'm sorry for not being clear. The premise is that it is cheaper to keep an existing customer than it is to attract a new one. What I am saying is that the cost of subsidizing a new phone annually is very likely much, much more than the cost of losing that customer and attracting a new one. Also, there are few, if any, customers that stayed with Sprint out of "loyalty". They stayed out of self-interest.

You are, of course, correct. But Sprint is referring to a 5,000 sq ft as your average person would. 70 feet in any direction is about all one can hope for.

Impossible. How can SQUARE feet be in a circle? That's crazy talk.

In that case, I think that the subsidy costs would far outweigh the cost of attracting a new customer from AT&T or Verizon.

No need to confirm. I am always correct.

I agree with your sentiment. A recurring credit adds up to hundreds of dollars, though. Perhaps it would be better to remove barriers to staying like the silly "upgrade" fee... Only if you buy through Sprint of course. In any case, Sprint still feels that it is the better value proposition for most customers, especially with the perceived value of unlimited data. One last thought. The cost of acquiring a customer versus keeping one in a market of 3 or 4 major vendors may not be all that different. So where we may guess the difference is $100, it may only be $10.

N/m

This place gives me a tech boner. Thanks for the great education.

I hope I did not bemuse or perturb you with its use.

Most towers (outside of urban areas) will realistically only go about 5 miles on my maps. They may be capable of farther reach but they don't. Perhaps they are just set that way for performance reasons. Or perhaps it is just the handsets, with their weaker transmission strength, that limits the distance. I have mobile broadband card users 10 miles from towers in "no service" areas but they are only able to connect because of external antennas/boosters. I understand that getting those RRUs up on the pole will allow for a longer "throw" at the same signal level. But wouldn't the handset limitation still apply meaning that the signal will be better at the same distance, but the overall possible distance from the tower would remain the same?

Jeff, you are spot on. A call center position is a very tough job that is barely above McDonald's in pay. I was lucky to negotiate about $10K more per year than my peers because of my background and education but it is still less than half of what I made in IT before my job was outsourced and much more stressful. About a third of my annual income last year was overtime. If overtime is not available, as it is not now, I cannot meet my financial obligations and begin drawing down savings. When overtime is available, I am working at least 60 hours a week to restore those savings. I know many reading this probably work 50-60 hours regularly in their current positions (as I did in IT), but please believe that there is a chasm of difference between taking calls from people with problems for 60 hours and pretty much any other office job... especially the salaried IT job I had. When I worked in IT, I would average over 50 hours a week, sometimes doing work in the middle of the night to not disrupt operations. But I decided when and what I worked on to meet the needs of the business. In the call center, our time is measured to the second from the moment we log in. In addition to averaging 10-11 minutes per call, we are allowed 1% in "Idle" time... meaning time not available to take a call. For a 7.5-hour shift, that is 4.5 minutes. Oh, and idle is only allowed to be used if you need to go to the bathroom outside of the two of the scheduled 15-minute breaks. I said "scheduled" because we are not only measured on how much time is spent on scheduled events like breaks but also on how close to the scheduled time we take them. You are not allowed to just take that break whenever you want. You need to be within 5 minutes of the scheduled time or it also gets logged in yet another metric. In the call center the work comes to us steadily like an assembly line, except that you do not know which part of the assembly you will be doing from moment to moment but nevertheless expected to know how to put each part on correctly. In addition, your supervisor is very likely watching remotely and taking notes and your entire day is recorded for regular reviews later... both of which can result in a "corrective action", not just for violating some policy but also for just being incorrect. Unlike my IT job, there is very little room to hide a mistake. Who the hell would want a job like this? Well, those that cannot do better for whatever reason... the young, the stupid, and apparently those of us with more brains than social intelligence. The young tend to not last because they get a better job and the stupid get fired. The best reps I have met are extremely intelligent but do not "fit in" -- either because of appearance or social skills. They tend to last, fortunate for Sprint and unfortunate for them. But having experienced unemployment myself, working in a call center is wonderful (as long as I regularly think back to those harrowing times). Not sure why I went off on this.... perhaps I need a blog in my life.

You folks gotta quit pinning Sprint's motivation on greed. Sprint is trying to survive. They are not in the position to be greedy even if they wanted to be. Sprint Debt to Equity = 1.77 Verizon Debt to Equity = 0.64 AT&T Debt to Equity = 0.61 Sprint Operating Margin = 0.64% Verizon Operating Margin = 16.99% AT&T Operating Margin = 12.87% Sprint EBITDA = 5.07B Verizon EBITDA = 35.33B AT&T EBITDA = 34.69B With the iPhone, Sprint feels it is near product parity with the other carriers. With unlimited data, Sprint feels it has a competitive advantage. Without upgrading its network, Sprint feels that it is at a competitive disadvantage. I think Sprint is right. If Sprint does not have a decent network by the end of 2013 I believe it will be facing bankruptcy reorganization. (However, I have never made money on the market so what do I know?). Personally, I would like to see S4GRU be a place where we talk about wireless technology progress (with a focus on Sprint as we have a vested interest) rather than where we opine on the other executive decisions it makes.

People want pros but don't want to pay what that would cost. You have to have less expensive dumbasses to talk to the 80% of the callers who are also dumbasses. The 20% of intelligent callers must wade through the front lines and hope they get one of the 20% of techs that are savvy. Doesn't happen often. Want a sporting chance at Tier 2? Call the Airave support line. That gets Mobile Broadband Support who are generally better than other lines of business.

They have brought back all they are going to. About 50% according to my wild guess.

Me' date=' neither. Fortunately, Sprint did not make this required. Used can stay on WiFi and 3g if they want.

True. And has brought many back inhouse since the lousy customer support era.

Rodeo drive

I wish I was on the gay list.

Are you talking about the older woman whose hoohoo got third-degree burns?

Sprint has let us know that wherever they are messing with NV, there are going to be dropped/blocked calls. They have updated out Network Event Board tool to show a "ticket" on any tower with NV work being done so that we can tell the customer the expected time it should be over and service normalized. Total time per tower seems to be 3 to 5 days.

Just came here to say I hate you both.