Sprint to sell off assets due to subscriber defections?

Things aren't going so hot down Sprint way right now -- although the carrier recently entered into that landmark $12B WiMAX deal with Clearwire and several other companies, it lost over a million wireless subscribers last quarter and posted a net loss of $211M. That's enough for CEO Dan Hesse to smack the emergency button: he's laying off 4,000 workers, closing Sprint stores, and cutting rates in an efforts to gain back customers and get back into the black. On top of all that, word on the street is that Sprint may also start selling off other assets, including lame-duck Nextel, even though that would involve "significant complexities," according to Hesse. Still, just the fact that he's thinking about it seems like a sign -- too bad no one asked him about those Deutsche Telekom buyout rumors.

[Montusama @ May 13th 2008 10:28AM]

And I just got my first cellphone, and guess who I selected?
Yes Sprint so....come on lower rates!

[XenoX101 @ May 13th 2008 10:42AM]

I'm not sure about that, if you are locked into a contract and they are in need of money, where do you think they'll look to get it? Also I doubt they can even afford to lower rates, even if they would get a bigger customer base out of it, the odds may work against them.

[Rafy @ May 13th 2008 10:33AM]

Just don't quiet understand why so many people leaving? If you buy a SERO plan that has practically unlimited everything except downloads and minutes whats the reason for calling sprint? Plus you get 500 minutes for $30 or 1250 minutes for $50. I don't think anyone can beat that right there.

[Fernando @ May 13th 2008 10:38AM]

2 Things:

Service.

Phone Selection.

You can have the cheapest plan on earth if your service sucks and your phones are crap people are going to leave.

[OneLove @ May 13th 2008 10:41AM]

it says you have to be invited by a sprint employee?

[XenoX101 @ May 13th 2008 10:44AM]

Well I work at Telstra, in Australia, and our prices are the most expensive you will find. Yes, we own the majority of phone lines and rent out to everyone. But our customer base is growing and our profits are rising. By this logic, we would be a failure. Customer Service and Quality of Services are just as - if not more - important than price.

[4honor @ May 13th 2008 11:29AM]

I do know people that will change services because they can get new and free phones from another provider... I almost switched because they gave me run arounds with getting a new free phone.

[shanoboy @ May 13th 2008 11:54AM]

Sprint has totally screwed themselves due to insanely horrible customer service.

I've personally shied away from the company before just from hearing horror stories from multiple former customers.

[Galley @ May 13th 2008 12:55PM]

One word: iPhone.

[lanejasper69 @ May 13th 2008 2:31PM]

customer Service (BLOWS)

Phone Selection (cheap and old school)

PEACE OUT PALM!!!

[Achilles @ May 13th 2008 4:07PM]

service works fine for me. Never had a problem with the actual cell service. The customer service does suck. I try to avoid those as much as possible. Phone selection would be my other gripe. I've been with Sprint for 8+ years.

Phone selection is slowly (not an exaggeration) getting better. Sell off Nextel and concentrate on your current subscribers. Offer better phone selection and you're on your way...

[qrius @ May 13th 2008 4:43PM]

I have the same plan. But sprint customer service really sucks. You have to wait about 25 mins until you get connected with a human.

but as long as nothing goes wrong, SERO is great.

[bizzLebozzLe @ May 13th 2008 10:35AM]

when sprint first acquired nextel... would it have been crazy for them to implement ptt on every sprint handset and just get rid of the nextel brand?

[Fernando @ May 13th 2008 10:42AM]

I foresee Sprint selling off Nextel since it was a stupid purchase in the first place. Nextel is SMR and sprint is CDMA they are not even compatible (reason why Nextel PTT wont work with Sprint phones). Also I see Sprint most likely merging with Verizon since they are both on the same tech and it would work great for them.

[Rafy @ May 13th 2008 10:44AM]

Fernando, I'll agree with you in one and thats in Phone Selection. On service I can't really speak of since I've never had any issues living in NYC and recently visiting Florida, California.

OneLove Google is your best friend. Try [e-mail]

[rkguy @ May 13th 2008 11:52PM]

I hate it when people abuse the SERO.
It does not help a sinking ship to bleed it dry.
I don't care if only a handful of people do it.
On principle, less money to them = worse infrastructure, worse CS.

[McCulligan @ May 13th 2008 10:45AM]

DT in no way can save this sinking ship. The revenue alone needed to merge the 3 technologies would sink DT's profit earnings. Why integrate horrible customer service, inferior equipment, and dead technology into the J.D. Power and associates 7 time customer service winner? This is beyond the realm of resonable thinking. Whomever decides to board that vessel needs their head examined. The only possible players in that game would be Comcast or Time Warner, they don't have their hands in the cellular game (yet), but seem to be willing to take the gamble if they can lure enough sucker investors to ride the wave of insanity and the eventual unemployment line.

[darkstar @ May 13th 2008 10:47AM]

that would be funny if they bought Nextel for 30+billion and then sell it back for 1+billion. :)

[dcny @ May 13th 2008 10:48AM]

If you can't beat the others by coverage and customer service beat them by price.

1 Make Sero plans regular plans
2 Drop unlimited plan to like 60 dollars
3 Drop Nextel
4 Stop outsourcing Customer Service or atleast keep it in Mexico, Belize or Canada.
5 New advertising campaign
6 Put stores in places where you have good coverage, not bad
7 Put stores in busy areas not the middle of nowhere
8 New CEO
9 Change name the Sprint and Nextel names are damaged just go with something new.

[dcny @ May 13th 2008 10:57AM]

oh yeah forgot

Should have never spun off Embarq.

[Erwos @ May 13th 2008 11:12AM]

Yeah, because the way to restore profitability to your company is to drop revenues and raise support costs. What are you smoking?

[dcny @ May 13th 2008 11:19AM]

@Erwos

Its a way to gain consumer trust and to get more consumers, if you don't have them you dont have a company

[MattG @ May 13th 2008 11:36AM]

They just got a new CEO: Dan Hesse

[e-mail]

[Neoprimal @ May 13th 2008 12:14PM]

"1 Make Sero plans regular plans
2 Drop unlimited plan to like 60 dollars
3 Drop Nextel
4 Stop outsourcing Customer Service or atleast keep it in Mexico, Belize or Canada.
5 New advertising campaign
6 Put stores in places where you have good coverage, not bad
7 Put stores in busy areas not the middle of nowhere
8 New CEO
9 Change name the Sprint and Nextel names are damaged just go with something new."

1 and 2 are suicidal. People aren't leaving because the service plans are expensive. People are leaving/have left because they were either a part of the big chunk of users that got booted from Sprint or knew/were related to people that were booted and also because the customer service is absolutely horrible. Great price plans will not fix horrible, rude customer service. And remember, 1 or 2 bad experience over the course of a 2 year contract = bye bye customer at the end of the contract. The SERO plan is just TOO great to be offered to everyone else, Sprint would lose money. That ties into 2. Unlimited for $60?! That's just absolutely crazy. Right now, I pay ~130 for 2 lines with 2000 shared minutes on Tmo with unlimited fam. messaging and 1 line with unlimited net. I'd love the sprint plan you're proposing but that would have them lose SO much money. Money from overages from single and family plans. Plus, the features...unlimited internet, etc. They'd lose from service addins as well. Most people are sitting at a 50-60 rate plan, ALL those people would go unlimited.
I agree with 3 and 4, completely. When I dealt with Sprint it was never 'outsourced' or I couldn't tell. I just dealt with really rude Americans who sounded like they didn't give a f^&k about my issues. But I agree, if they have to outsource I'd rather Canada first, then Mexico, then Belize and please, english english english.
Not so keen on 5, 6 or 7. Advertising, meh. Good word of mouth I believe is best for Sprint at this point. Maybe a few promotions, only if they change their rates though. As for stores (and putting them where it works vs. doesn't work) - I don't want to piss off any sprint people on here but sprint coverage while extensive, sucks. They get cut off way more than any other cell service I've dealt with. Back in the day they weren't so bad, when I used them I never heard the difference that people claimed to hear. The irony is however, that I've never really heard of areas where sprint has 'bad' coverage. It works almost everywhere, so that's where stores need to be. Also, stores need to be in the middle of nowhere, since that's probably where Sprint will beat out at least Tmobile and maybe even ATT. Sprint and Verizon work pretty much anywhere.
8 and 9, not necessary. Hesse is new and I think he's got good ideas. Customer Service is supposed to be improving and Sprint pioneered the unlimited minutes plan, that's a good start. It's just going to be a difficult road wooing customers back to you, the first step is...I can't say it enough...good customer service. I don't think they need a name change either - Sprint is a powerful brand, and there's no worries with keeping it - a name change won't really do any good because no matter what customers will know it's Sprint either way....unless they merge, a name change isn't warranted.

[boe @ May 13th 2008 10:55AM]

If you go to any of the phone forums Buzzaboutwireless (sprint's own forum) howards, pdaphonehome, ppcgeeks etc - same suggestions over and over again - sprint unwilling to listen

1 Train CS reps to solve your issues and provision phones properly and fix billing issues.

2 Get newer phones out faster

3 Let real people beta test new phones so they get issues identified and fixed before rollout - better for word of mouth, get newer tech phones out faster, reduced tech support calls, better for businesses using sprint for pda and data.

[Montusama @ May 13th 2008 11:40AM]

To you're comment about getting newer phones out faster, and to everyone else's Sprint is at a real disadvantage, It uses CDMA EV-DO, though Verizon also uses it, but if you look "worldwide" many carriers use GSM and its successor UMTS, which places companies based for example in Europe (i.e. Nokia and HTC) Not to release CDMA phones at a rate of their GSM counterparts, with Samsung and LG, in Korea the two major telecom companies SK Telecom and LG Telecom, the latter is the only one who uses CDMA. But looking at the cellphone market worldwide the United States is screwed on selection to begin with, and the only reason (as a new sprint user, not even a month on sprint) why I wish I went with T-Mobile or AT&T was because they use GSM and a GSM Unlocked phone is much simplier to get and program to said network, Good Luck finding a cdma unlocked phone

[boe @ May 13th 2008 11:46AM]

Montusama,

I agree - unlocking their network would help them greatly. Part of the issue is in other countries you shop for a phone, not the carrier. Sprint's testing program has meant the delay and even the death of some phones. There was a palm phone I wanted many years ago - about the size of a startac and similar form factor- sprint spent over a year and a half on the testing phase - the manufacturer gave up.

[NHAnimator @ May 13th 2008 11:09AM]

How much did they spend on that "sign"? No wonder my bill is high.

[Jaymez @ May 13th 2008 11:15AM]

I love Sprint. It works exactly where I want it to work and exactly where I don't want it to work. Being able to choose vacation spots where there is no cell coverage is great! (No, I'm not being sarcastic.)

[Dr Buzz0 @ May 13th 2008 11:19AM]

Sprint has a good network with high broadband penetration, some of the best 3G service in the United States. Their coverage is good and their phones are compatible with Verizon so they have unrivaled coverage with plans that have a roaming agreement between the two carriers.

When they bought Nextel they got access to a lot more spectrum and a network which was already popular and had a great push-to-talk feature.

Sprint has everything going for it. This is a classic case of mismanagement and blunders by the company. They have failed to integrate the Nextel features into their phones and create phones on the Sprint network that are cross compatible with Nextel PTT, even though they stated from the beginning that would happen. They have not utilized the new spectrum as they should. They have not provided the kind of choices for new phones that customers expect. They do not have any plans for phasing out iDen and transitioning to a unified network.

They have only themselves to blame for not thriving.

[Jaymez @ May 13th 2008 11:22AM]

Er, umm, that should say I don't get service exactly where I don't want it.

[Iridium @ May 13th 2008 11:35AM]

Sprint service is actually pretty good. I haven't ever dropped a call in the past 3 years.

The customer service is actually good now. I called yesterday to cancel my out of contract plan and the call lasted about 5 minutes with a really nice person on the line. No haggling just sorry to see you go.

No that that plan is cancelled its SERO all the way. All Sprint has to do is make the SERO plan standard and millions of people will join up. They might not generate the same revenue per subscriber that they did before but they will add a huge volume of new subscribers.

[UHUH @ May 13th 2008 11:39AM]

Of course sprint is going to drop nextel. Nextel is the only part of their business that saw an increase in subscribers last quarter. That goes along with the rest of spint's actions in an effort to lose as many customers as possible. Sprint is rediculous. I hate sprint. I hate sprint support. I hate sprint customer service. I even hate the spint logo.

[omoks @ May 13th 2008 12:12PM]

Ehem. A lot of hate there buddy. Maube counseling should be considered on your part.

[Big Dave @ May 13th 2008 12:03PM]

Sprint bought Nextel because Nextel customers had the some of the highest monthly bills at the time. Then they let Nextel just crumble. Business use Nextel they also use blackberries Nextel hasn't had a new blackberry in over 3 years just NOW they've said they are going to have a new iden blackberry. Also PTT went out of style for the most part where it once was cool to "chirp" friends, it got annoying quickly, that and texting never quite worked on nextel as well.

[drumstyk1 @ May 13th 2008 12:14PM]

My brother and I both have the sero plan. If you are trying to sign up for it DO NOT USE [e-mail]. I used it and everything went smoothly except my phone never shipped. My tracking number kept saying that my order was canceled due to inactivity and it took me 2 weeks and countless hours on the phone with "customer service" to get it figured out. I ended up having to replace my order with another email (obtained by googling @sprint.com or @mail.sprint.com) and even then I got 2 bills.

I have never had any problems other than that with sprint but i do live in a major city. I say if it works well where you are and you save $80+ per month it is pretty hard to turn down.

[riggs @ May 13th 2008 1:15PM]

i used the savings email, only problem i had was having to call them to continue processing the order.

[Ankur @ May 13th 2008 12:59PM]

Would it now be possible to swtich to a SERO plan and get Sprint to pay my ETF over at AT&T? If they are that desperate for new customers, that's one thing that they could think about doing.

[Chris Taylor @ May 13th 2008 1:06PM]

The problem with nextel is that it was a LAME DUCK before sprint bought it IE nextel really burned it bad. You see they have interference on some of there frequencies with emergency services. They were ordered to fix it or shut down. Nextel did not fix it in fact they intentionally put it off till sprint bought them so they could make it SPRINTS very very expensive problem.

Now sprint's suffering for it. That sucks :-)

[Brian @ May 13th 2008 1:08PM]

I am a Sprint customer, with a 5 line family plan that costs 65$ a month for 500 shared minutes and that includes free text messaging and internet for my Treo 755p -- we've been very happy, except for some reason Sprint keeps screwing up my bill. Every month since last November I have to check my bill and get random charges removed from it. As for the phone service itself, it's been excellent where I most frequent, which is Ohio, Chicago and the hills of Virginia, but honestly, I haven't had problems anywhere I go. Since Sprint is purging people fast, renewing with a great deal was easy and cheap.

But letting go of 4000 people and closing stores? Sprint needs MORE people in their stores as it is! The two near me, one is typically staffed with ONE person, even at Christmas time -- ONE PERSON! The other is also a repair center and the wait time borders on 30 to 45 minutes to get help because they are so busy. The last thing Sprint needs is LESS outlets to help people.

[Brandon @ May 13th 2008 1:53PM]

I wonder if it would be possible to start a non-profit that takes donations to buy out a failing telecom, convert it to a non-profit, and then force it to go open access.

It worked with Blender a number of years ago. It would be interesting to see if the same thing could be done for something larger.

[Tracy @ May 13th 2008 2:31PM]

Hopefully they will go broke. I have never been as angry at a company as the two unfortunate years I was with SPRINT. Uniformly bad service and a " I don't give a shit attitude"
I would love WiMax as an alternative to Comcast for internet. I don't trust Sprint enough to buy from them.

[LyE @ May 13th 2008 2:37PM]

As a former Nextelian (hired in 1999) and was laid off in March, I can tell you the people they laid off were bad choices. The rumor floating around was that upper management blamed the Engineering group for not being able to cobble the PCS and iDEN Networks fast enough or good enough. Engineering took a 14% cut! And my job actually SAVED the company almost $400,000 in 2007 but Management was sure that the Technicians could do my jobs as well as their own. If anything, Sprint needs to divert more resources into their Engineering groups so they can come up with innovative services consumers demand.

Also, IMHO, Sprint made a grave mistake in discounting the Nextel moniker and it's customers who had the highest ARPU in the industry. Nextel was unique because it was appealing to large companies and government agencies. These groups clamored for Nextel after 9-11 because there was no single platform all the agencies could communicate on except iDEN. After that day, everyone from a Public Works worker to Secret Service bodyguards carried Nextel. And now, Sprint is considering selling Nextel off... officially, they aren't of course! But the fact is, they never knew what to do with it, how to market it, how to run it or how to take care of Nextel's customers where money really didn't matter so long as it worked - which it usually did. Sprint looked at Nextel who had Motorola iDEN equipment and Motorola phones with limited features (no MP3 players, no QWERTY, no camera, etc...) and thought they were "broken" but missed the point the point that Nextel customers wanted a robust phone that they could talk on. That's it. They didn't need it in pink or green, they didn't need ringtones.

Now, they're left with a smaller group of employees who have more on their plate and have been told that more layoffs may be necessary if the company financials don't improve - which is rather ominous since Dan Hesse told stockholders to expect more bad quarters before good ones.

That should boost employee morale for sure!

[Joe T. @ May 13th 2008 2:39PM]

I've been with Sprint since 99. I've gotten great coverage and rarely had dropped calls. I've been in areas with friends and co-workers who use other networks and have gotten coverage where they haven't; the reverse has never happened.

On the rare occasion where I've had to call customer service, I've never had to wait more than a few minutes, except once in early 00, where I waited for about 45 minutes during a special promotion that more than doubled my minutes for 1¢.

Phone selection is mediocre to bad-- so bad that I can see people staying away in droves because of it. But on the upside, CDMA means I can have my phone near my radio in my car without it interfering with reception, and it means I could get a phone with a built-in FM transmitter for playing music over my car's radio (or a rental when I'm travelling).

[xB Owner @ May 13th 2008 2:43PM]

There are only two types of people I know that still use Sprint. Those that are able to wrangle themselves a SERO plan, and those suckered into the Sprint network because of the lure of Nextel for their business. And even those people seem to be considering other options.

For Sprint to survive, the first thing they need to do is invest in new cell towers and/or leases on other carriers' towers. Next, they seriously need to weed out the leeches taking advantage of SERO. They aren't making any real money off of them anyway. Then they need to dump Nextel. After that, offer all services at a rate of 10%-15% discount when compared to AT&T and Verizon. I really think if they could pull all that off, they would see a huge rebound in their contract and sales numbers. (Yeah, I know it is really easy to type and not so easy to do.)

There is really one reason, and one reason only why people are defecting from Sprint. Crappy coverage. If they don't resolve this issue first, nothing else they do will be able to salvage the company.

[Frank @ May 13th 2008 11:27PM]

Make me drop SERO and I will buy a Iphone so quick MY head will spin. I would even buy a 2g IPhone.

[Chris @ May 13th 2008 3:08PM]

I worked for Sprint Customer care, Nextel and also for AT&T.... AT&T is by far the best customer care in my experience.


I also love how sprint are dropping nextel and how sprint lost 1 million customers in Q1... I AM LOVIN IT, I want to see the ship go down! its thee worse customer service, worse phones ever...

Burn sprint burn! I hated working for them, because at times the things I said to customers (I QUESTIONED), it was messed up ... I did break the rules once in awhile and actually helped someone out. But it wasnt something I did all the time like I did when I worked for AT&T

[Periks19 @ May 13th 2008 3:31PM]

What sprint need to do is have more tv advertising, seriously i never see a tv commercial about sprint when all day i see alltel and att commercials, hell even att gophone has more commercials than sprint/nextel. They also need to start getting nice phones out there maybe start selling refurbished phones at a lower prices similar to what att does. Now on closing down stores here in AZ all sprint stores are always busy so if they close some of them what would happen.

[Perplexer @ May 13th 2008 4:00PM]

I read the title as "subscriber defecations;" I need to get my mind out of the toilet!

Anyway, I'm perfectly happy with Sprint's service (although not their customer service!) and phone selection.

[Chris C @ May 13th 2008 4:36PM]

hmmm.....worst customer service I have ever encountered and the worst handset selection.....And they only lost 1 miilion customers?? Wait till next quarter. But seriusly, Nextel is one foot in the grave and the other foot is on a banana peel. They havent had a new Blackberry in 3 years, and the regular handsets? anything really new? nope. On CDMA, when there was a run on the RAZR, they still wouldnt carry Motorola phones. Listen, i know the RAZR had its problems, but the PEOPLE wanted. I currently use T-mobile and Verizon and they have the best customer service. I would never go back to Sprint EVER. EEEVVVVVVEEEERR.