We first caught wind of Sprint's plans to launch a couple dual-mode CDMA / WiMAX devices
under the "Sprint 4G" brand a couple days ago, but we're thinking about it a little more, and we're struck by the carrier's decision to run its 4G services as an MVNO on Clearwire's
new Clear network. Sprint's balance sheet is
basically upside-down at the moment, so we sort of understand why it's not eager to directly invest in a build-out of 4G infrastructure, but at the end of the day, leasing access to a network for general voice and data services is a totally failed business model -- there's a reason we have an
MVNO graveyard. We're not saying Sprint's turning itself into the next Helio, but you just don't see the other major carriers doing things like
selling off almost all of their existing towers and then letting a spinoff handle their 4G buildouts. We'd say there's some deep juju going on behind the scenes here, and with company spokespeople saying things like
"nothing's off the table," it feels like some radical changes are about to hit Overland Park. We'll see how it shakes down
soon enough, we think -- the status quo doesn't seem like it can last much longer.
posted December 9th 2008 5:16PM
I live near Overland Park.
That's great.
Wooohooo...
I live gaithersburg md
I lived in Overland Park for a couple of years (just left). And to keep this post on topic, Sprint couldn't manage to have a solid signal all the way around the interstate.
I live in overland park, and I know somebody who works at sprint.
BTW, nice picture of the sprint center...
I live in Wichita, and go to school in Pittsburg now so a trip up to the OP is pretty common (Apple Store), not to mention all the friends (including my roommate.) that live in the OP. Either way, last time I was up there I drove around the sprint HQ and my iPhone had much better service than my buddy's sprint phone, if that isn't saying something I don't know what is. However to be fair, I had very bad service in the Sprint Center, my dad blamed it on being some kind of conspiracy.
@Squid7085
if your roommate lives in OP, doesn't that mean you live there too???
I'm in college now, not sure why I got low ranked.
Sprint sneaks stupid charges on peoples bills and they get sick of it so they leave to go to Verizon. That has nothing to do with me or what I did personally. Just saying.
Verizon, where you pay more for less bandwidth and get the same phones, only gimped to have less memory and given a higher sticker price. Ick. No options available, I guess. Does AT&T have a monopoly yet?
Bell is worse; so much worse.
im not paying a premium to verizon, i have att but on a grandfathered orange plan, then my SERO, which has unlimited roamingon verizon so verizon is really a rip off. Its only useful if everyone else you know is on verizon then you can take advantage of IN calling and unl sms with the cheap sms plans. But overall, sprint still needs to stay afloat because verizonwill be a monopoly, and impretty sure the government wont allow a cdma monopoly. same thing as why tmo cannot be bought by AT&T
Actually, they just can't keep track of things...If you see any charge, call them and they take it off.
Kinda like the free call trick...
*2 then wait for the disclaimer, then say dropped call, but no more than 2 a day, you might get you contract voided
(oh no)
@ ace587
Y'know, I'm not exactly sure the government would consider Verizon buying Sprint or AT&T buying T-Mo monopolies in either category. I mean, GSM and CDMA are two completely different things, but as long as one or the other exists, it's not a monopoly, I don't think. If AT&T bought up the rest of the big four or something ridiculous like that, THEN there'd be a monopoly.
It's not as bad as it use to be. It was moreso due to Sprint's old billing system in which customers had all these add-ons/discount codes on their account which just lead to a mess (especially with those who tried to cheat the system by getting all the freebies they can through retentions). It also didn't help that nearly every other carrier utilized MMS and Sprint utilized PictureMail. The difference is that MMS can easily be distinguished from data while PictureMail can't. So people would get charged for data even though they had the PictureMail add-on, or messaging, without a data plan. Since Sprint has toned down on that and incorporated plans picture/video mail in their messaging add-ons/plans, and also incorporated messaging/data into the plans themselves instead of dealing with add-ons (i.e. making their system idiot proof), they are less issues for most.
LOL! My bill is $169 every month for 2 phones with unlimited everything. I've never had a "sneaky" charge on my bill
I think their CEO Hess said something about launching a nuclear bomb on Sprint. May be he didn't want to spend any of his 27 million a year salary for that and figured if he bankrupt the company he could sit next to the car manufacturers and others who drove their companies into the ground and ask for a hand out. After all he's the big risk taker so he deserves the 27 million a year. The employees who get laid off who make $20 an hour don't deserve squat.
psh I didnt make 20 dollars an hour. More like 9 plus commission. that averaged to around 14 or 15 an hour.
Selling off their towers means nothing. If I am not mistaken, most carriers did this ages ago, and Sprint was in fact one of the LAST to cash in by handing them over.
You're very much mistaken.
The major carriers don't only own their towers they make money off leasing them too. They own towers just to lease. Verizon has GSM towers and AT&T has CDMA towers that they lease to other carriers they can't even use themselves.
@tande; then who is using the 23,500 towers Crown Castle leases back to the operators? Or the 20,000 owned by American Tower?
I'm sure the operators still own a small number of towers, but the majority was sold to third parties ages ago. Really, Sprint was not alone in this, and selling your towers is usually considered a GOOD thing, not a sign of approaching death.
Actually it does mean something. I work for one of the other T-Mobile in the cell-site real estate group, and we aren't selling our towers and neither is AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, or most anybody else even at the municipal provider level. Selling your towers is a way of sacrificing long term fixed assets with amortization and liabilities for a quick infusion of liquid assets in the form of cash. You now have fewer liabilities and obligations to pay out on if you wish to assign or sell your rights to another company in a acquisition or merger.
Or- you don't have the money to maintain the employees to run your tower marketing operations any longer. All the money Sprint made in selling their towers to TowerCo was lost in their total Q2 & Q3 earnings this year anyways since they lost more than $300-Million each and every quarter in 2008 already.
Want to try saying that again?
in a few words FUCK THEM!!!
I'll tell you whats wrong with Sprint..
#1. They didn't get the iPhone.
#2. Then they didn't get an Android Phone.
#3. Then I got tired of the lack of cool phones and left, wanna buy my Mogul?
Here is the link:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Sprint-Mogul-Cell-Phone-Like-New-HTC-6800-PPC6800_W0QQitemZ170285947839QQcmdZViewItemQQptZPDA_Accessories?hash=item170285947839&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1205|66%3A2|65%3A12|39%3A1|240%3A1318|301%3A1|293%3A1|294%3A50
Meh, Verizon doesn't have either of those and they are doing just fine. Sprint has actually been pretty decent in the handset department lately, first to offer the Diamond in the US, first with the Touch Pro etc...
Sure, no iPhone has probably hurt them a lot, but no Android device in their lineup probably didn't do much damage.
I think the biggest problem with Sprint is crappy marketing and some awful PR. Then again, the only people I know who are REALLY happy with Sprint, are all on SERO (like me). And I doubt we are making them that much money.
You are correct from a marketing/sales perspective. But if you are implying that Sprint's current phones don't compete on a technical level (as implied by your Ebay auction), you are wrong. Touch Diamond/Pro is the best phone on the U.S. market. The G1 is great but Android has a loooong way to go. The iPhone was groundbreaking in concept, but phone is crap (that's a fact). And while Blackberries are great, the Storm is a joke. Maybe... MAYBE you could make the argument for the N97 or Xperia... maybe.
bandigolo is full of shit. (also a fact)
You are an idiot, and nobody cares about your opinion regarding your jobsGasm err iPhone.
Just because you are easily fooled by locking into an over glorified company name, doesn't mean that there aren't millions of business people who like the business-minded phones coupled with truly unlimited plans and the ability to tether internet off their CrackBerries.
I, for one, _LOVE_ that my business phone can do literally anything and everything that a phone should or can do.
Not everyone in the world is willing to sacrifice their souls for something they find visually appealing (not that Sprint doesn't have enough of it's own annoying lock-in.)
No phone can "for a fact" be a piece of crap. If can be a piece of crap in your own opinion, thats fine, but millions of people would not agree with you, and probably half of those people if not more would say its the greatest phone out there.
I can think of twelve iPhone owners that I know very well (some 1st gen some 3G). Only two of those people still have the original unit. Of the ten replacements, only one was a 3G upgrade and the rest were due to phone (not network) problems. And some of those people are actually on their 3rd iPhones. That's more than a 80% fail rate (if you count total phones). Add that to my own iPhone experience (the unit I had was a complete P.O.S.), and I feel that I have a fairly good sample size without even leaving my own circle of friends. Add that fail rate to the other host of problems that plague the iPhone (i.e. clunky performance, no native MMS, not-so-high-speed internet, freezing, random program closing, lackluster screen resolution, locked-down OS, etc. etc.).
You're right, whether a phone is crap is mostly opinion. And my opinion is this: these common, widespread problems reveal that iPhone = crap.
I don't know why people get so defensive about this topic. It could very well be that iPhone 3G v2.0 is an awesome piece of hotness waiting to be unleashed. We shall see. But thus far, I think the iPhone has earned my criticism. And at this moment in time, there are other phones out there that are simply much better. I speak the truth, yo.
All carriers suck (if you ask the right person). I used to use to be on Sprint but switched to AT&T and I've experienced more dropped calls in the span of 6 months than I did while I was with sprint for 2 years. I hope sprint bounces back cause to me they were good phone company.
That background makes me think of my old Pee-Chee folder.
Ever since I switched to an iPhone, I miss Sprint's service :(
Sprint is a rebel to the big duopoly verizon/AT&T. awww ef it, i jst want sprint to stay afloat because of my SERO :D
Sprint rulez!!
lol
I live in Aberdeen!
They're leasing access to a network they own the majority of (if wikipedia's number of 51% for sprint's ownership is correct) That's a far cry from most MVNOs. Whatever the reasoning was behind dubbing the new, larger company clearwire, don't let that obscure the fact that sprint owns by far the biggest chunk of it (owners of the former clearwire are at 27%)
Personally, I think WiMax roaming would be a great value add to existing data card customers, and don't see how teaming up with
-The only other existing WiMax operator
and
-Intel, Google, Comcast, et al.
to pull it off somehow dooms them to failure.
Couldn't agree with you more, Charlie. By integrating WiMax into their existing EVDO Rev A 3G technology, a Sprint Powered By Clear(wire) device will enable the end user to use the device across the USA as a minimum great 3G speed and when the user enters into a Clearwire WiMax city, the speed from the device will be explosive. My big concern is how they will price this device and market it for the more inexpensive laptops and netbooks out there without overcharging the public. Families do not want to pay $349 per laptop for each member of their family and another $60 per month for each wireless broadband account. Also, with the computer companies embedding the technology into these inexpensive machines, the end user would at least be better off not activating the modem embedded in the computer and purchasing a USB version to insert into a wireless N router like a Kyocera KR-2 or Cradlepoint.
Well I hope they have a good plan, I really don't like the other carrier options.
ATT - Crappiest service I have ever used, dropped calls, long delays for voice mail, bad contracts and sub-par 3g. On the up side they do have the iPhone (read popular) and since they are GSM the phones can usually be used around the world.
TMobile - Haven't used them, but people that do complain about coverage all the time.
Verizon - Good coverage, fast 3g, but you pay a premium and they will cripple the same phone carried by Sprint.
Sprint - Good coverage, just as fast 3g, lower price, but never call in for customer service (this might be getting better). And with free roaming you get to use the Verizon network as well.
Sprint may have made some bad business decisions (Nextel), but if they can pull the WiMax off as a partnership, then buy up that partner (or merge) they could be sitting in a good position.
This once again proves my old theory: Sprint Just sucks.
I've tried the rest, and Sprint is the best . . . My companies love Sprint . . . Great service, great people, and now great phones (the new HTC Touch Pro is hands down better than the iPhone, which I like but it is not a business phone; hope they get the Touch HD, BB Bold, and BB Storm soon) . . .
I wish I could round up a few private equity firms to help me buy Sprint . . . They just an entrepreneurial kick in the pants to get them going to overtake grandpa AT&T and his bipolar cousin Verizon . . .
Indeed... I thought about buying Verizon the other day but I glanced at my Patek Philippe and realized my driver was late for my daily polo match. Another day, perhaps.
Sprint is good I need an iPhone and nothing will beat it.
Marketing for Sprint is actually up this year with the Now Network commercials and the Instinct. With the Samsung Rant, LG Lotus, Samsung Highnote, HTC Touch Pro and Diamond all being on the Top 12 phones of 2008 List. Sprint also recently won the "Highest Call Quality Peformance Among Wireless Cell Phone Users in the Southwest Region" by J.D. Power and Associates.
Every cell phone customer can say a bad thing of another carrier, it is the laws of being a Consumer
Sprint shouldn't be doing that bad. They offer good service prices, a nice 3G footmap, and a decent selection of handsets.
Unfortunately, the average US consumer is an idiot. The avg. American cell phone user talks a little less than 700 minutes a month on their phone. 44% of American cell phone users talk 200 minutes or less a month. People are paying more for wireless service than they have to.
That being said, there is no way in hell I'll ever be a sprint customer. CDMA fails and I talk like 20 min a month. I doubt the average customer has an actual excuse why they're not on sprint. He or she just thinks she does.
Actually I miss CDMA. I had Verizon for 8 years and i left because of phone selection. I've got AT&T now and the service isn't bad, but it's not nearly as good as verizon. It's funny actually, ATT used to say they had the fewest dropped calls, but i had never had any till i switched to them!
-Taylor
As an episode of "Weeds" once mentioned:
"He convinced the city council to let him buy the school busses, and then he leased them back to the city for twice what he paid them!"
I don't get the point of setting up a separate company to buy this stuff just so you can lease it from them. I guess so that if they go bankrupt, you'll be debt free?
-Taylor
We get it, your name is Taylor...