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:
The Sprint soap opera took more turns over the past week, with the carrier yet again posting quarterly results that would charitably be called disappointing and – more importantly – having parent company Softbank send someone to look over whatever is happening with Sprint’s network plans.
(When I say disappointing, I mean mostly for the 2,000 people who will also be losing their jobs due to Sprint’s inability to get out of its own way.)
First the numbers: Sprint did manage to end the most recent quarterly reporting session with more connections to its network than when the quarter started. Posting any sort of growth is not a small feat for a carrier that has been hemorrhaging customers for several quarters.
(I am being a bit obtuse in defining Sprint’s “quarter” as the carrier recently went from the “traditional” quarterly labeling that began with Q1 in January to now having its Q1 begin in April. You know, just to make it that much more difficult to explain just how bad the carrier is doing.)
However, all of that growth came from services that were not directly offered by Sprint, thus whoever was authorizing those connections had no idea Sprint was the carrier providing the service. That’s probably not much of a big deal in this day and age of outsourcing and what not, but at least worth mentioning in this day and age of mobile operators blanketing every form of media with advertising touting their brand.
One bright spot in the carrier’s postpaid direct customer numbers was that it managed to attract 261,000 net tablet connections, which could only partially offset the 533,000-smartphone connections it lost during the quarter. Of course, Sprint then mentioned during a conference call that it would look to trim its reliance on tablets: Because why would Sprint want to keep a good thing going? Sure, tablets theoretically may not drive the same amount of revenue as smartphone connections, but at this point should Sprint really be splitting hairs?
This of course all leads back to Sprint’s ongoing network issues. The carrier recently stated that it has basically finished up all of the work associated with its extensive Network Vision program (which went smoothly?) and is now focused on tapping into that sweet, sweet 2.5 GHz spectrum just burning a whole in its pocket.
As anyone who loves the word “propagation” knows, the 2.5 GHz spectrum band is not … how would you say … propagation friendly. Sure, it propagates. It just does not propagate very far. You know how like a professional baseball player can throw a ball real far? Well, the 2.5 GHz spectrum is more like me trying to throw a baseball real far. I don’t, and it doesn’t.
Anyways, the 2.5 GHz spectrum has/is/was/will always be touted as Sprint’s “ace-in-the-hole” in that it has a lot of it and that means it can rollout some powerfully fast services. In this day and age of people wanting everything fast – if not faster – Sprint supporters see this as a good thing.
However, remember that part about “propagation” and how 2.5 GHz spectrum doesn’t do that very well? Yeah, well, that means that for Sprint to cover a certain area with a network using the 2.5 GHz band, it will need to put in a bunch of radios with which to throw around that spectrum. Radios cost money. Backhaul to those radios cost money. Power for those radios cost money.
Oh yeah, Sprint also announced it would be spending less money on capital expenditures this year than originally forecast to the tune of like $1 billion.
Obviously, Sprint cannot be expected to manage any of this on its own, thus overlord Softbank is sending over a 2.5 GHz expert to make sure that Sprint can actually follow through with taking advantage of this long-held potential advantage. They even gave this person a fancy new title of “technical COO,” though you would think that somewhere in there would also be the words “good” and “luck.”
At this point, any form of help for Sprint is probably a good thing as the way things have been going would in no way be considered good business practices. And, with more than $20 billion invested in Sprint, Softbank’s Masayoshi Son seems to be hitting his limit of patience in terms of getting Sprint back on track.
OK, enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Worst of the Week column. And now for some extras:
–I nearly went running for my underground bunker/barrel this week after reading that bitter rivals AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless were working together on allowing for cross-network voice over LTE calls. AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless working together!?! The end must truly be near!
Luckily before making haste for said bunker, I noticed that the news did not include any mention of also working with smaller rival T-Mobile US, which has also rolled out VoLTE services.
Now, there is nothing that says all carriers need to play nice with each other, and in fact it’s kinda fun when they don’t. But having the No. 1 and No. 2 operators moving forward with a partnership that is required for VoLTE to ever garner traction without wanting to include carrier No. 4 in on those plans, well that’s just one step over the evil line.
Some may read into this partnership as a way for the entrenched “big guys” to elbow out their smaller sibling, who also happens to be messing up their whole “duopoly” plans by offering up services that millions of people seem to like. Others may say that the deal is just one step in a long process toward broader VoLTE support. You know, one step at a time.
–There is nothing better than broad consumer surveys conducted to try to attempt to define the who/what/when/why of mobile usage. Thus, a recent survey looking to tackle these age-old questions from XAd and Telmetrics proves to be both compelling and useless.
Highlights from the survey include:
Women spend more time per session on their mobile device, while men spend more time overall. (No comment there.)
Men are more apt to use their mobile device while being mobile, while women prefer to use their mobile device while stationary at home. (No comment there.)
Those rascally millennials like to multitask, while Gen Xers account for the most time spent on mobile overall. However, baby boomers are more focused on their mobile usage, while younger consumers are more likely to dawdle.
Informative? Only if you want to bolster already established stereotypes.
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