Sprint’s financial performance may get worse before it gets better as the carrier relies on price cuts to bring in new subscribers. But wholesale service and Sprint Business are two bright spots for the nation’s No. 3 carrier.
During the first half of this year, Sprint added 715,000 wholesale and affiliate subscribers while losing more than 1.3 million postpaid and prepaid customers. Sprint’s wholesale and affiliate service revenue was up 28% year-on-year for the most recent quarter, while revenue for both its postpaid and prepaid units was down.
This spring, the unit picked up half a million wholesale and affiliate subscribers, about twice as many as T-Mobile US added. AT&T lost wholesale subscribers during the first two quarters and Verizon Wireless does not report wholesale accounts separately.
Sprint Business
Sprint Business is poised to be another strong performer this year. Enterprise accounts often combine wireless and wireline managed network services, and Sprint is benefitting from recent investments in its wireline infrastructure. The carrier upgraded its optical backbone network and started seeing the results of that investment last summer.
Now Sprint Business is focused on enterprise mobility services including mobile device management, security solutions, fleet and asset management tools, unified communications and rich communication suite solutions like video conferencing.
“We’ve started to ladder our solutions and services into key pillars of mobile security management, unified communications and collaboration, mobile workforce management … fleet and asset management, and, last but not least, enabling services, the more traditional integrated wireless and wireline solutions,” said Julie Goulding, senior manager of business marketing at Sprint.
“You’re going to see us express some thought leadership around the Internet of Things,” Goulding added. “So it’s really unleashing mobility and really helping our customers adapt more quickly to the future of work.”
Focus on the workforce
Sprint Business is ready to move into the limelight, starting with a new advertising campaign that will include highly targeted TV, print and digital ads built around the tagline: “For companies with people in them.” Sprint says its campaign reflects a focus on a new economy in which the most important business resources are human resources.
“The biggest challenge that most companies have is really having an engaged workforce, and we know that companies that do really well and thrive have some of the most engaged employees,” said Marin Martinovic, director of business marketing at Sprint. “I think employees will really demand more of their workspace and of their employer, so that they can be more engaged and more productive. We want to make sure that we really partner with the companies … so that they can recruit the best possible talent.”
Goulding noted that research has shown that companies with more engaged workers have higher earnings per share and report better returns on investment.
“We have embraced a new work style here at Sprint, and we’re going to help our customers do that as well,” said Goulding. “We are trying to introduce … really a new philosophy in how we’re going to help our customers solve some of these really universal challenges.”
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