Sprint remains a hot WOTW topic, while T-Mobile US is accused of shrewdness
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:
For a company that can’t seem to get out of its own way, Sprint has done a wonderful job of being out in front of the news cycle.
And so it was again this week as the nation’s No. 4 carrier (but No. 1 in our hearts!) attempted to clarify reports it may or may not have been the source of in terms of the future of its always in need of updating network.
(For some reason, whenever I think of Sprint’s network I always picture that one street in every town that is always under construction. It looks like people are there everyday working on getting it fixed, yet it never seems to get fixed. More on conspiracies later.)
During its third quarter results conference call, which covered results through the final three months of 2015 that most would call the fourth quarter (see, Sprint likes to make things difficult), Sprint management attempted to tamper down the fury caused by a recent Re/Code story citing “unnamed” sources about the future of Sprint’s network. During a media question-and-answer session after the call with analysts, Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure took a question from the Re/Code reporter looking for more clarity on Sprint’s plans, only to have Claure basically call the story a lie and that is “caused a lot of damage.” It was all quite intense and fun.
But back to Sprint’s attempt to dig itself out of a stock-price hole. The carrier claimed it was not indeed looking to ditch macro sites, which are the bread-and-butter of today’s cellular networks and also provide plenty of bread for the tower industry. And in fact, Sprint said it anything it was looking to add more macro sites to go along with tens of thousands of smaller cells in an attempt to bolster coverage and capacity, and more importantly not generate anymore “dust” for consumers.
Sprint did, however, lay down the disclaimer that it would be evaluating all of its tower sites, which is a nice way of leaving the door open to moving forward on parts of a plan it just moments before stated were not plans at all. It’s all very tricky and fun.
We have already discussed in this column my take on Sprint and anything involving its network. All. In. Favor.
But, as Wall Street demonstrated first by shredding Sprint’s stock price on word of any such nonsense, followed by taping those pieces of stock back together as quickly as it could once the carrier countered those claims, I probably have very little say in the process.
Now, some have suggested that Sprint and parent company SoftBank were behind all of this drama, having “tested” the waters with claims of a significant network overhaul leaked to the media late on a Friday, which is often primetime for such shenanigans. Seeing how the market reacted to the idea, Sprint decided to pull back on such an extreme move, putting out instead the comments on its quarterly conference call.
Hey, I love a conspiracy theory as much as the next person wearing a tinfoil hat and hiding in their underground bunker, so I am all in on this being the “truth.” Plus “The X-Files” started up again this week, so I am especially open to any and all nuttiness.
More precisely, Sprint is now set up to remain at the forefront of all news for at least the next year, and nothing is dearer to my heart than a carrier unafraid of being in the news.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Worst of the Week column. Here is a quick, but satisfying extra:
–Despite claims from its highest leadership that everything it does, it does for consumers, T-Mobile US continues to be hounded by those that think perhaps the carrier is not in fact doing everything for the average Joe.
This week’s claim came from a self-described federation of labor unions, which filed an investigation request with the Federal Communications Commission to look into T-Mobile US’ “no-contract” claims. The query is based on T-Mobile US noting it does not require rate plan-related service contracts, but does sort of tie down consumers with its device financing program, which has consumers paying full price for their mobile devices over a contract term.
Many of us know this as the mobile industry’s move away from legacy 2-year service contracts that included device subsidies towards consumers (potentially) paying less per month for wireless service, but paying full price for their mobile device.
However, Change to Win feels T-Mobile US is not being perfectly clear with consumers about this movement of monthly payments from services to devices and further is holding consumers captive with threats of collection agencies and locked devices should consumers look to flee without paying off those devices.
I must admit CtW has a bit of an argument here, though it probably can go more broadly against all operators. I can still remember vividly the industry’s fight against having to pro-rate early termination fees on service contracts, though most eventually did under duress. Those carriers have thus taken back some of that power with this move away from service contracts and instead requiring customers to pay full price for their devices. Very shrewd wireless carriers, very shrewd.
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