.
You've got to place yourself into Hesse's shoes. He took over when Sprint was failing miserably after the Nextel merger. That's hard to come back from but Sprint's becoming noticeably better everyday.
Why are you singling our Sprint on the premium data fee? In their old pricing structure, extra lines cost $20 + $10 for any extra lines. That's a lot better than the usual $30 data add-on fee by the other carriers. Sprint has to be profitable and when they subsidize these $600 phones, they need to make up the difference elsewhere. IIRC, At&t also raised their administrative fees and likely Verizon, too.
I'll give you this one. I'm grandfathered Into an older plan and I plan on keeping it.
I've been using 6-10GBs a month and I still haven't noticed any throttling and they mention users above 5GB would fall within their top 5%. Besides, they've always had the right to limit speeds as the contract states. They've just recently come out and said they're doing it for people that are on congested towers which should give the other 95% of users a better experience anyways.
Hesse got most of his raise in Stock and I don't think he's allowed to sell until after his contract is up.
They're already replacing a lot of Sprint's upper management. For example, Azzi and Elfman is no longer with Sprint.
This is common practice with every carrier. T-Mobile just bought a lot of Spectrum from Verizon. By the end of the year, some of it will be available to T-Mobile users. Can their current phones support it? Absolutely not.
I agree that the bloat ware is annoying but once again every carrier does this. You can't single them out.
Ignorance is becoming a lot more common on the Sprint hate train. Sprint's about to roll out B41 in many areas and B26 for extra coverage. They'll be a force to be reckoned with because they're the carrier with the most spectrum assets in the U.S. so their future looks bright.
Yet you have to admit that a good majority of Sprint's problems were a failure of maintaining their network over the years. We all know Sprint's network has been clogged for years and years yet haven't made anything of it until recently with network vision. And even those plans have been pushed back and back and back. I gave Sprint 4 years to fix their network since the Wimax incident. A lot of my family in Chicago has switched to tmobile (not saying they're the best carrier, but they are the best bang for the buck in a major metro area.) and that's almost 20+ members in my family who made the switch. I'm very curious to see tmobile's Q2 results and Sprint's disappointing Q2. Dan Hesse is facing the same problem he was when he joined sprint in 2007: customer turnover. 7 years later, same CEO, same problem......
I'll give you that, their 1500 unlimited plans are a good deal compared to a lot of current plans. But that's only if you're grandfathered in. That was mainly the reason I stuck with sprint (unlimited data) until I realized that I couldn't even use my data half the time. However, I can't see why most people who switch to Sprint now with their current framily pricing scheme. It doesn't offer as many benefits as tmobile (international data roaming, wifi calling etc etc.) or as family friendly as ATT (10 gb buckets)
The problem is exactly that. Sprint has way too much spectrum that they don't know what to even do with. That's evident that a consumer shouldn't have to buy a new phone every year to take advantage of it.How long do you think it'll be until Sprint's current crop of (800, 1800 and 2500 spark bands )will be "obsolete"?
Yet at the same time where Tmobile/verizon are adding new lte bands, they're also strengthening their previous bands with 15x15 mhz spectrum or 20x20. Sprint just hops on over and adds a bunch of bands all over the spectrum. The most useless being 2.5 ghz. 2.5 ghz is way too high up to ever have a good penetration and that's clearly been obvious to the failure that was Clear. I'd go so far to say that 2.5 ghz is borderline "junk" spectrum when it comes to cell carriers.
Yes, tmobile bought 700 mhz spectrum from verizon, but their 1900 mhz/edge network when refarmed is fully compatible with current lte devices. You would only have to buy a new phone, for that exactly, the new spectrum that tmobile bought.
But what's further aggravating is how Sprint locks down their devices. The only plus I'll give them is allowing the nexus 5. I'm going to say that carrier phones are dead. That's clear by the iphone (updates) and nexus (future support.) No one wants locked down, crippled phones anymore. I can understand why Verizon does it, they can do it. Their network is the best, their prices are high, but guess what? they can afford to lock down their phones. Sprint cant. Sprint's desperate for customers, they're in no position to lock down their phones as much as verizon or even beyond verizon (lte sim card embedded phones, which they're moving away from fortunately.)
Looking at Sprint's current prepaid plans (45 dollars no data and 60 dollars 2.5 gb,) I'm severely disappointed with how expensive that is. ATT's prepaid carrier has essentially the same prices but guess what? they have the network whereas sprint doesn't...
And as far as their phone prices, that's on them. CDMA phones have always been more expensive than their GSM counterparts. Factor in weird oddities like Wimax and upper end bands like 2.5 ghz, of course they're going to be $$$$. You're using bands that are so far off from what ATT/verizon are using.
Also, in 2005 one of the conditions FCC had for the merger of sprint and nextel was that sprint was supposed to launch a wireless serviec on the 2.5 ghz band within 4 years. It's 2014 and I can say Sprint hasn't really "launched" a wireless service on that frequency until now.....
The bottom line is I won't fault Sprint for all these years of not having 100 mbps service. I get that they're upgrading their network and it takes time to run these things out. However, I will fault them for these past few years that I can't even open up a webpage on 3g/4g unless I'm connected to wifi or the consistent dropped calls I was getting and calls that wouldnt go through. Data usage is one thing, but if my texts/calls won't go through, I'm done.