Worst of the Week: The wireless ‘good news, bad news’ game

Hello! And welcome to our Friday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
Wireless carriers are a tricky bunch. Sure, they like to promote their transparency, but the small print and “mystery” taxes on every bill reveals their true, evil intentions.
This trickiness is also apparent in their dealings with news, both operational and financial. Most know about how companies like to announce news items that may not go over so well on Friday afternoons in an attempt to let the weekend cool off those who might become hot under the collar. Wireless carriers are of course hip to this making it a must that I always check out the latest press releases before going off the grid.
This action is also found to happen, but in a different way ahead of quarterly financial releases, most typically when those numbers are going to be bad. It’s always good for executives to have something cheerful or different to talk about during their conference calls then having to answer questions as to why their million-dollar decisions are not paying off.
This week was a prime example of such activity as Sprint announced a number of “news” items along with its first quarter financial results, which seemed to grow much worse as the week wore on. Those extra news items included the expansion of Sprint’s LTE network (definitely worth a mention); another release mentioning where it now offered LTE service (a nice reminder, though perhaps redundant); and then a much-hyped announcement surrounding the expansion of its music platform, which the more I read the less I found interesting.
These announcements all provided a bit of a buffer for the real news, which was Sprint’s continued inability to retain new customers or maintain its existing ones. Though, it must be noted that Sprint did report improved financial performance, something that I think would deserve higher mention by the carrier or even its own press release.
Sprint is not alone in this practice and I only mention them because there is a lot of recent history from Sprint on this topic. I guess you could say that T-Mobile US announced its own music plans this week that were somehow even less compelling than Sprint’s music announcement in an attempt to deflect attention away from the financial impact its tremendous growth is having on operations. But, T-Mobile US’ music announcement did not really have to deflect much bad publicity, as the fact T-Mobile US added more than double the new customers than its rivals combined pretty much did plenty of deflecting.

AT&T did something similar when it announced first quarter results last week when it also announced expansion of its LTE network on the same day.
At the end of the day, you can’t really blame carriers for at least attempting to deflect bad news with questionable news. Isn’t that what we all do whenever we pull out the “do you want the good news or bad news first” routine, that we all know is really about the bad news.
OK, enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Worst of the Week column. And now for some extras:
–Speaking of carrier results, how about that T-Mobile US? Wow! Sure, the financials are taking a bit of a hit, but wireless customers seem to be all about the Kool-Aid John Legere and the T-Mobile US crew are serving up.

How much longer will it be until we start referring to T-Mo as the nation’s No. 3 carrier? With 49 million customers and growing, and Sprint at 55 million and falling, those lines are looking set to cross at some point.

Of course, the potential for lines to cross would become moot should Sprint just buy its way to success, which would go along with the latest (and I do mean “latest”) rumors this week of Sprint looking to acquire T-Mobile US.
I will for the moment refrain from commenting on other news outlets this week again rolling out the “rumors” of Sprint looking to acquire T-Mobile US. I think I have made my point on that topic clear.
–Finally, it looks like Canada is striking one of the “positive” attributes from that country, announcing plans to install Wi-Fi access across up to 50 of its national parks.
I guess what good are the great outdoors if you can’t keep in touch with the virtual one though a tiny screen at the same time. At least park goers will be able to quickly update their status to “mauled” once the inevitable polar bear attack happens.
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