SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956
Sprint yesterday announced "the best profitability in company history" thanks to growth in its customer base, just days after saying it needed to merge with T-Mobile USA in order to improve its network.
If Sprint was doing worse, the merger might not have happened. Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure said that the company's successful turnaround "positioned Sprint for strategic opportunities which led to our proposed merger with T-Mobile." Sprint's profitability and free cash flow was key in giving Sprint the chance to combine with T-Mobile, he said.
In the just-ended fiscal year, Sprint said it had "its highest annual retail phone net additions in five years and the best profitability in company history with its highest annual operating income at $2.7 billion and annual net income for the first time in 11 years, even when excluding the one-time favorable impact from tax reform."
(Score: 5, Interesting) by slinches on Friday May 04 2018, @07:16PM (2 children)
Sprint may be doing okay financially, but that doesn't mean that they have the resources to compete against Verizon and AT&T. It's entirely possible that they will need to join with T-Mobile to survive long term due to the nature of spectrum auctions and the cost of investing in network infrastructure.
On top of that, it may be that this profit announcement is at least partially due to the proposed merger. Since the T-Mobile network will be the "anchor" for the joined company, it would make sense for Sprint to be more careful about where they want to invest in growing their network.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Friday May 04 2018, @08:46PM (1 child)
Maybe if they spent that money on infrastructure instead...
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 05 2018, @01:07AM
The one thing they need is spectrum. VZ and AT&T and T-Mobile have the majority of it. They bet on the wrong horse with WiMax instead of LTE exactly at the wrong time. It has cost them ever since. That strategy worked with CDMA so you can not really blame them for doing it again. But this time no one else was doing it. Even QCOM went 'meh whatever' and backed LTE.