Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure regales CTIA attendees with humor, tackles network concerns
LAS VEGAS – Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure’s comfort level at industry trade events continues to grow as the executive charmed attendees during a keynote address at this week’s CTIA Super Mobility event in Las Vegas.
During the question-and-answer session moderated by CTIA President and CEO Meredith Attwell Baker, Claure started off by jokingly admitting that the key to him being named to head up Sprint last year was knowing a multi-billionaire referring to Sprint Chairman Masayoshi Son. Claure was tapped to replace previous Sprint CEO Dan Hesse as part of a broad management shakeup initiated by Son.
Claure’s charm continued as Baker asked Claure how he has recently been able to attract a broad swath of new international executives to relocate to Sprint’s headquarters in Kansas City, which Claure said those executives were just excited to be coming to the U.S.
While the charm showed Claure’s growing level of comfort, he also tackled staged questions regarding Sprint’s operational struggles. The responses included statements about the carrier’s network showing vast improvements in recent consumer surveys and reiterating the carrier’s plans of tapping into its vast spectrum resources in order to provide improved network performance.
Claure said the carrier expects to have the No. 1 or No. 2 ranked network in large markets within the next 24 months, which would build on some recent success. Sprint managed to score some second- and third-place rankings in J.D. Power’s recent survey as well as similar rankings in RootMetrics’ network performance analysis.
Claure specifically cited recent results from RootMetrics in Denver that showed Sprint had the fastest mobile network in the market, which the carrier said now supports LTE-Advanced carrier aggregation of its spectrum holdings and wider channels in the 2.5 GHz band. Claure told CTIA attendees that the Denver network was a model for Sprint’s plans across the country.
“We expect that to happen in all of our markets going forward,” Claure said. “That’s my job for the next two years.”
Apple’s latest iPhone 6S models are also expected to help Sprint’s pursuit of network speed as they include two-carrier aggregation, which Claure said will result in a doubling or tripling of network speeds for consumers.
Sprint is also aggressively rolling out small cells in support of its recently overhauled macro network, which Claure said would provide the capacity needed to support growing consumer demand for mobile data services.
Claure also tackled the financial ramifications of the carrier’s aggressive pricing moves, noting that being the price leader in the U.S. still provides the carrier with one of the highest average revenue per user metrics in the world.
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