What led to the decline of Sprint?

[diesteldorf]

I have Verizon and prior to July/2010, used a combo of Virgin Mobile and TMobile prepaid.
I've noticed that many have stated honestly that Sprint used to be on top in the beginning and then declined steadily to fall to 3rd or even 4th place among the major carriers.

Just wondering what caused the decline? Did Sprint rest on it's laurels? Did it make a lot of poor management decisions..i.e..the Nextel merger, or did AT&T and Verizon overwhelm them with a combination of business savy and mega dollars?

When Sprint was sitting on top, did they also charge a comparatively cheaper price than the other major carriers?

 

[Seditec]

The launch of the iPhone and aging equipment is a majority of what dropped then down and the fact they are the only company that I can think of is what's still got them in the game IMO. I think with the lose of the Nextel band they will pick back up to hopefully compatible data speeds and coverage.

Sent from my LG-LS670 using Android Central Forums

 

[TraderGary]

And then add the unfortunate WiMax fiasco. WiMax failed miserably to deliver. I really do believe that Sprint can close the gap with their current LTE initiative.

 

[Seditec]

I probably don't help the issue with my data usage but I pay for unlimited data so by god I will use unlimited data

Sent from my LG-LS670

 

[ab304945]

I believe some of it was caused by the previous CEO,

 

[Ry]

The merger with Nextel.

Choosing WiMax over LTE.

 

[tirith]

Choices which in hindsight were poor... Wimax, iSheep paperweights... I mean iphone.

Nextel merger wasn't too bad. It got them the 800mhz bandwidth.

What has kept them in is unlimited data, (my speeds aren't bad,) and their flagship sprint exclusive devices, aka evo, the og cdma android hero, etc.

Sent using my MoPho-King photon

 

[Darth Mo]

Just wondering what caused the decline? Did Sprint rest on it's laurels? Did it make a lot of poor management decisions..i.e..the Nextel merger, or did AT&T and Verizon overwhelm them with a combination of business savy and mega dollars?

When Sprint was sitting on top, did they also charge a comparatively cheaper price than the other major carriers?

The Nextel acquisition was a major catalyst in their downfall. When that happened, they dumped tons of money toward Nextel while neglecting the Sprint PCS side of things. When the recession hit and the housing market crashed and the construction business collapsed almost overnight. So now they had this huge money pit that was Nextel and a Sprint network that was outdated compared to other carriers.

This was a time when the vast majority of people still used their phones 90% of the time for talking. So take Verizon's "Can you hear me now" campaign and eventually AT&T exclusively having the iPhone, Sprint was in a lot of trouble as they had basically no leverage against the other carriers. Sprint's phone selection sucked, Nextel was useless without the construction/manufacturing sector, and their plans were not competitive with other carriers.

When Hesse came along things started to change mainly by introducing plans not designed to induce overages saving people tons of money.

Of course they took a couple steps back with the Palm Pre backing and the WiMax debacle, but that's a story for another day.

 

[jean15paul]

Besides what other people have said, Sprint just hasn't kept their network up with the competition. Everyone else has been investing in network upgrades, while sprint hasn't.

Also the Nextel merger wasn't a bad decision at the time, but they have held onto the nextel push-to-talk feature for too long. There aren't enough customers that use it, and it's taking up valuable spectrum.

 

[Paul627g]

Yes the economy crash was a big blow to the Nextel side of things. I'm construction based and lets face it, if your a labor/local material truck driver/iron worker/operaters, etc... you have a Nextel and everyone on the job site does... When all these trades lost their jobs, all these Nextel's went silent and were shut off eventually....

Lets just hope Hesse and the Network Vision plan puts Sprint back in the right path, probably the biggest key component Sprint can do is continue the unlimited data... That will become a strong marketing tool as the LTE network gets stronger and word gets around to give Sprint a second chance.

 

[scuba_steve]

iPhone.

Network.

Poor decisions.


It was a pretty fair battle until AT&T got the iPhone. Their subsequent growth dwarfed the other carriers' growth. Verizon survived (and even thrived) due to their robust network...but Sprint and T-Mobile started sliding.

As others noted, Sprint also wasted time and cash on Nextel...and tried to get out in front with 4G, but with a poor 4G strategy.

They also pinned hopes on exclusive marketing of the Palm Pre, which was introduced with a lot of (deserved) hype at 2009 CES, but that plan didn't work out either. Even though it was (and probably still is) the best mobile OS out there, it was too late. The sheep wanted their iPhones...and their apps (most of which are glorified client-server versions of functionality that could be hosted on a website)...and Palm was at last two years late getting that device to market...and poor hardware reliability meant that even their in-store reps weren't pushing the Sprint-exclusive hardware (and OS).

Here we are years later and Sprint announces 5 LTE markets (not the promised 6)...in July...while VZ announces a couple dozen new markets once or twice a month...and has nearly 300 such markets.

They are in trouble. Too bad, because I love their pricing, but frankly, you get what you pay for. Unlimited data? Sure, you can have it on Sprint...for what it's worth. I am in a major metro area and simple web pages often take more than a minute to load on "3G". Thus, I am very close to moving my entire family to VZ...and THAT is part of the problem for Sprint. They are losing TONS of higher end business and propping up their numbers with lower-end pre-paid business.

 

[paul-c]

WiMax was a pretty bad decision. It set Sprint back quite a bit. They are pretty late to the LTE party because of it.

 

[gogators1974]

The Nextel acquisition was a major catalyst in their downfall. When that happened, they dumped tons of money toward Nextel while neglecting the Sprint PCS side of things. When the recession hit and the housing market crashed and the construction business collapsed almost overnight. So now they had this huge money pit that was Nextel and a Sprint network that was outdated compared to other carriers.

This was a time when the vast majority of people still used their phones 90% of the time for talking. So take Verizon's "Can you hear me now" campaign and eventually AT&T exclusively having the iPhone, Sprint was in a lot of trouble as they had basically no leverage against the other carriers. Sprint's phone selection sucked, Nextel was useless without the construction/manufacturing sector, and their plans were not competitive with other carriers.

When Hesse came along things started to change mainly by introducing plans not designed to induce overages saving people tons of money.

Of course they took a couple steps back with the Palm Pre backing and the WiMax debacle, but that's a story for another day.

That's true

Sent from my MB855 using Xparent Cyan Tapatalk 2

 

[scaryhumor]

I just quit Sprint for the 2nd time. This round after 9 years with them. The first time is when they were first pushing PCS, about 1999. They were the best thing going at the time. Word got out, and people flocked to them. As I recall, it was the first national carrier to go digital / 2G. The towers in the Chicago area got maxed out, calls were not being handed off properly. "Hard hand-offs" I think, and calls were dropped like crazy. It was all month to month then. You could easily leave, and I did. Came back in 2003, and stayed till this weekend.
I didn't want to leave, but after months of almost no service for $100 a month, what choice did I have?

 

[Star-Lord]

Bad decisions, to put it bluntly.

 

[crzycrkr]

Nextel acquisition was the big factor that led to some of the smaller bad decisions having a bigger effect. Nextel tied up a lot of money, and led to the poor customer service that they have finally seemed to fix.

Sent from my EVO LTE using Tapatalk 2

 

[Go Android!]

The launch of the Iphone didn't hurt Sprint at all. I was already getting dial up speeds a few months before it launched. Sprint not having the Iphone was a huge part of their decline which led people flocking to At&t then eventually Verizon.

But Sprint should have realized that their 2500mhz wimax wasn't suffice for 4G. They should have realized that can't keep Nextel running forever. And they should have done something about their 3G speeds before it turned to sht. It's like Sprint waits for there to be a problem to happen then tries to do something about it.

And their LTE network already has problems, I'm in Atlanta and haven't found a drop of LTE,yet. Most people haven't. 3G still sucks here even though Network vision is supposedly complete in Atlanta. Looks like Sprint won't be getting better anytime soon.

 

[TraderGary]

The Nextel debacle has turned out to be a big plus as the old Nextel towers are also being set up with LTE and Sprint will end up with more towers closer together than the competition resulting in better coverage.

As for the previous comment, Sprint launched LTE in Atlanta with way less than 40% coverage as does Verizon and AT&T with their launch announcements.

The wind is finally behind Sprint's sails!

And when I'm in Lawrenceville I get solid fast 4G LTE.

HTC EVO 4G LTE

 

[crzycrkr]

The Nextel debacle has turned out to be a big plus as the old Nextel towers are also being set up with LTE and Sprint will end up with more towers closer together than the competition resulting in better coverage.

As for the previous comment, Sprint launched LTE in Atlanta with way less than 40% coverage as does Verizon and AT&T with their launch announcements.

The wind is finally behind Sprint's sails!

HTC EVO 4G LTE

Agree. Nextel has hurt them, but it will definitely help in the long run. Just as Wimax was a good short term solution that hurt them in the long run because they waited too long to start on their LTE network.

Sent from my EVO LTE using Tapatalk 2

 

[541rrhse]

The merger with Nextel.

Choosing WiMax over LTE.

Sprint had to do something with their spectrum or it was to be lost due to FCC regulations. Since Clearwire already had "pre-WiMAX"(3G) in place since 2005, they merged their spectrum so Sprint could keep it. In 2008 LTE was years away, WiMAX was here now. Oh and by the way Google, Intel, Comcast, Brighthouse Networks, and others invested 3 billion dollars as well. Without the launch of the EVO 4G (WiMAX) in 2010 I'm not sure Sprint could have started this turn around. Remember the failed Palm Pre?

Moving forward Clearwire's LTE and Release 10 LTE-Advanced network will be a fall back in high capacity large metro markets.

Sprint: Clearwire's LTE will 'pinpoint' high-traffic areas - FierceWireless

Light Reading - 4G/LTE - CTIA 2011: Clearwire Updates on LTE - Telecom Video Document


1/5/2011


[YT]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkieK-mRBlk&feature=player_embedded[/YT]

[YT]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3eLssxXyGo&feature=player_embedded[/YT]