from the running-sprints-in-a-marathon-race dept.
In 2013, SoftBank took control of Sprint in a $21.6 billion acquisition. Sprint was already in trouble, but Son announced his intention to merge the company with T-Mobile to challenge Verizon and AT&T. One of the first things he did was put Claure on Sprint's board. When the plan to merge with T-Mobile ran into regulatory objections and failed, Son bought Claure's company and named his protégé Sprint's CEO.
In the 17 months since, Claure (pronounced CLAW-ray) and Son have had hundreds of phone chats, exchanged thousands of texts and e-mails, and sat through dozens of midnight meetings. They've slashed prices—Sprint offered iPhones for $1 a month last year—and replaced much of the old executive team. This week people familiar with the situation said the company would eliminate 2,500 jobs, bringing total cuts under SoftBank to more than 4,000.
It hasn't helped much. The stocks of SoftBank and Sprint plummeted to multiyear lows in mid-January, though both recovered some with Sprint's report of third-quarter subscriber gains and lower-than-expected losses. SoftBank has plowed more than $22 billion into Sprint, and yet all of Sprint is now valued at $11.8 billion. The company's $2.2 billion in cash is about the same as its 2016 debt obligations.
A decade ago, Sprint had a $69 billion market value and a chance to dominate the U.S. wireless business. The company is now No. 4 in essentially a four-player business. It hasn't posted an annual profit since 2006.
Related Stories
T-Mobile and Sprint, the third and fourth largest U.S. wireless carriers respectively, have called off merger talks, although they have left the door open in a joint statement:
Sprint Corp and T-Mobile US Inc said on Saturday they have called off merger talks to create a stronger U.S. wireless company to rival market leaders, leaving No. 4 provider Sprint to engineer a turnaround on its own.
The announcement marks the latest failed attempt to combine the third- and fourth-largest U.S. wireless carriers, as Sprint parent SoftBank Group Corp and T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom AG, show unwillingness to part with too much of their prized U.S. telecom assets. A combined company would have had more than 130 million U.S. subscribers, behind Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Inc.
The failed merger could also help keep wireless prices low as all four providers have been heavily discounting their cellphone plans in a battle for consumers. "Consumers are better off without the merger because Sprint and T-Mobile will continue to compete fiercely for budget-conscious customers," said Erik Gordon, a Ross School of Business professor at the University of Michigan.
The companies' unusual step of making a joint announcement on the canceled negotiations could indicate they still recognize the merits of a merger, keeping the door open for potential future talks.
Also at Bloomberg, NYT, and Ars Technica.
Previously: Sprint: Purchase of T-Mobile Promotes Competition
Inside the Plan to Pull Sprint Out of its Death Spiral
Related: Sprint the Only US Telecomm to Challenge NSA
T-Mobile and Verizon Mobile Plans Change; Probably Not Better for Consumers
Are True Burner Phones Now Impossible in the USA?
T-Mobile's New 600 MHz Network Rollout Begins This Summer
Verizon Wireless Divides Unlimited Plan Into Three Worse Options
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Thursday February 04 2016, @08:23PM
How much more value must be lost before the duopoly of Cingular/AT&T and Verizon is challenged? Who was this denied merger really benefiting, if not those two huge companies?
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by frojack on Thursday February 04 2016, @08:52PM
Sprint had the wrong technology, and too little coverage. Not enough of either to weather the storm of technology evolution.
Verizon had the wrong technology but lots of coverage, and enough customers to survive the forced march to LTE/GSM technology.
T-Mobile is still attracting customers [marketrealist.com] and is way ahead of Sprint. The problem is that its German holders want to get rid of it. However continuous performance improvements [arstechnica.com] over the last 10 quarters may cause them to change their mind.
T-Mobile should be buying smaller regional carriers rather than looking to be bought. Merging #4 and #3 does nothing for diversity and competition. But merging #3 and # 6, #7, and/or #8 would improve the situation.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Friday February 05 2016, @05:02PM
I'm curious how costly the wrong towers are. It was one of the major questions during the proposed TMobile merger.
Sprint made the wrong 4G choice also; they put some serous money into WiMax before dropping for LTE. A bit of a shame; WiMax is just a different market segment to LTE (shorter range, lower latency, more bandwidth). I played Left4Dead with a friend over WiMax and it was playable.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday February 05 2016, @08:10PM
I'm curious how costly the wrong towers are. It was one of the major questions during the proposed TMobile merger.
Its not the towers themselves.
Its the transmitters in the shack below the towers, and in some cases, the actual antennas mounted on the towers, and in some cases the cabling from transmitter to antenna. (Frequency band changes between CDMA and LTE usually imply new antennas).
Buying new transmitters, antennas, and cabling, and sending a crew of techs out to each tower, (some of which you don't own but simply rent space on) is a big expense.
They have to enter the shack, find room in the racks, (can't take the old stuff out yet, too many phones in the field use those transmitters - stuck with them for another 10 years), re-plumb all the cables, run new feeds up the towers, hang new antennas. Even a crackerjack crew will take 3 days for 4 to 5 guys, and its dangerous work. [pbs.org]
Since many towers are shared facilities, you have to coordinate all of this with your competitors, or the tower owners. And if the tower back haul isn't sufficient to handle the new speeds offered by LTE, you have to rebuild that as well.
Verizon avoided the costly change over required to get to GSM. All the GSM carriers paid this price years ago. Part of Verizon's great coverage is that they avoided that cost, and used the money to expand coverage. But now they can't avoid it any longer.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by dltaylor on Thursday February 04 2016, @08:39PM
My current Virgin Mobile plan is piggybacked on Sprint, so I have less desire to see them go under than many, but they did cram crap onto my phone during the a previous update. I'll miss the phone, though, if they go under (or merge into either of AT&T or Verizon), since HTC has some nice tools for it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Thursday February 04 2016, @09:03PM
I thought it was strange that Google partnered with Sprint and T-mobile for it's Project Fi. [google.com] I suspect it was only because the then-available dual mode chipsets only supported one GSM and one CDMA network, and Verizon wouldn't play ball.
I suspect future Nexus phones will probably support multiple concurrent GSM radios on all the available GSM/LTE bands giving Google a broader choice of partners for Project Fi.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Celestial on Thursday February 04 2016, @09:05PM
Back in 2010, I did a lot of research into which mobile carrier provides the best coverage in my home area. Most of what I read said Sprint. They lied. While I have decent coverage at work, I have little to no coverage at home. There are days at home where I have one bar. There are days where I can't make any connection at all, not even a call. I gave them five years to improve, and it's actually gotten worse. Now I'm just waiting for the iPhone 5SE, and I'll make a switch to either AT&T or T-Mobile.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday February 04 2016, @09:40PM
Where I am (somewhat rural, small town), T-Mobile is the worst, I'm not sure about AT&T, and Sprint is pretty decent except inside my house which seems to be a dead zone except on the top floor. Most people around here use Verizon, which has excellent coverage around here. They all, every single one of them, bitch about how ridiculously expensive Verizon is with their $150-300/month phone bills (that's what I hear, I haven't checked their bills personally).
I use Ting Wireless which is a Sprint reseller, and my bills are cheap. I'll live with the crappy coverage. I'm not going to spend $150+/month for a fucking phone plan.
Oh yeah, the other thing they all bitch about is how bad Verizon's customer service is.
If you live in a large city and don't care about rural coverage, then T-Mobile is probably a pretty good bet. They're usually considered to have the best customer service. There's also resellers for them, including Ting (you have to use a different phone for the T-Mobile networks of course).
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Thursday February 04 2016, @09:42PM
I had the same problem which is why I switched to Cricket, which uses AT&T. I got tired of having no way to make a call at home and only having half of town where I could get more than 2 bars. Now I stay at 4 bars minimum anywhere I go and data works flawlessly everywhere.
BTW anybody who wants a nice Android phone cheap without all that OEM skinning an crap, just good old vanilla Android? Check out the BLU line [amazon.com] of phones. They have models from $60-$350, so they have something in every price range, and no OEM extra crap just plain vanilla Android. I'm loving the hell out of mine, got a nice quad core with a Gb of RAM for $100. Good screen, nice for video, easy peasy to root, just a great plain vanilla Android phone.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday February 04 2016, @10:12PM
Wow, BLU went completely under my radar. Checked the list of mobile phone manufacturers by country [wikipedia.org], and it's in the United States, headquartered in Florida of all places.
The top of the line $350 phone uses a MediaTek Helio X10 with 8 cores, 3 GB of RAM, and an interesting 2560x1400 resolution. I expect they'll put out a MediaTek 10-core eventually.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Friday February 05 2016, @04:58PM
Interesting, I never new that. Of course they are designed in USA but manufactured in China.
I've been thinking of buying a used Nexus 5 (they are ~140USD), but I'll take a closer look at BLU. The big advantage to Nexus is the community and unlocked bootloader, which is probably the most reliable vector for updates.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Saturday February 06 2016, @02:00AM
Well I'm loving the hell out of mine. Good camera, great battery life, came with ICS but upgrade to Jelly Bean was waiting to go (haven't checked about Lollipop as I tried it on my wife's and didn't care for it) and took all of 30 seconds to root. Just a really good solid phone with no extra crap at a damned good price, whats not to like?
I ended up turning on a couple friends to BLU and they work outside and abuse the hell out of their phones and both have said their BLU phones are still working as good as when they bought 'em, despite how many times they've dropped them onto pavements and one even dropped his from the top of a bucket lift, nothing more than a few scratches on the case. Once I find a phone I like I tend to stick with it for years so having a phone that can take a beating is always a plus in my book and the BLU just works great, I couldn't be happier.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 1) by ollonk on Thursday February 04 2016, @11:13PM
Sprint does business in my area, along with AT&T and a Verizon rural partner. Sprint's coverage is a joke here, making their service a non-option for anyone who needs a phone that functions more than half the time. I'm sure that it can't be this bad in more populous areas, but I question the wisdom of their doing business in my area. Perhaps we're an exception rather than a rule, but based on their business model here, I associate the Sprint brand with low prices but poor coverage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 04 2016, @11:18PM
Posting AC and somewhat abstractly because I'm chicken.
I was there at Sprint long before the decline (as we now see it) was evident. The rot began at the executive level and worked its way down. Everyone could see it happening.
Since then, I've learned it's a recurring pattern/cycle in technology:
1. Find some hype.
2. Oversell/overinvest in said hype -- even though your engineers advise caution and prudence (Bonus: If kickbacks and golden parachutes are part of the deal, it makes it easier to ignore engineers)
3. Pump up shareholders and employees about some utopian cash cow that's always just around the corner
4. Fail miserably, but not before collecting bonus and golden parachute payoffs
5. Layoff hundreds or thousands of employees (normally the ones in #2 that said this was a bad idea).
I saw it first at Sprint, but it seems to be "The way it's done(tm)." The executives who got the golden parachutes are now doing the same thing at other companies.
Fuck the industry.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Trip on Friday February 05 2016, @02:06AM
I'm a current Sprint customer, albeit, one who joined in 2014. I joined primarily because Sprint roams onto US Cellular and is the only major carrier to do so, meaning they're the only carrier with service at my parents' house in a very rural area.
I find Sprint service to be very good, and truly do not fully understand the hate. Generally, complaints seem to be "I used Sprint 5 years ago and it sucked!" 5 years ago is an eternity in an industry like this. In the time since then, Sprint has rolled out LTE across most of its network on PCS, now has LTE on 800 MHz in many areas, and if you're in an area with 2.5 GHz deployed, then speed is no issue either. Their 3G is significantly better than Verizon's, too; if I find myself on Sprint 3G, in most cases I'm not hurting for more speed.
Sprint's biggest problem, in my opinion, is with its image. People got burned by Sprint some time in the past, and no matter how much Sprint improves, they won't give Sprint a second look. As it stands now, even if another carrier suddenly gained service at my parents' house, I can't say I would look at switching. Definitely not to T-Mobile, who has way too many coverage holes in rural areas. AT&T's network has surprisingly little LTE outside of the cities, a fact that goes under-reported in many places, including their own coverage map. (There is not one single shred of LTE along US-29 in Nelson County, VA, but the AT&T coverage maps says more than half of it has LTE!) Verizon would probably be worth investigating, from what I have seen, but they do make you pay for it.
Beyond service, their pricing is competitive, I've had great experiences with their online chat and phone support, and my Galaxy S5 is a great device. No issues on that end of things.
Am I missing anything here? Is there anything wrong with Sprint right this moment besides an image problem?