Items tagged with Sprint
Sprint may be the fourth-place U.S. wireless carrier and panned for its spotty nationwide coverage, but the company is already laying the groundwork to boost its LTE network to gigabit speeds. The company is proudly proclaiming that it is the very first carrier to deploy Gigabit Class LTE on a commercial network. Sprint demonstrated this new high watermark for wireless connectivity in the U.S. in New Orleans, with a prototype Motorola smartphone that is using Qualcomm’s brand new Snapdragon 835 SoC and Snapdragon X16 Gigabit Class LTE modem. Motorola will debut the production version of this smartphone most likely sometime later this year for use on Sprint’s network.Image Source: WirelessWeek...
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It’s been a whirlwind week in the wireless industry. Verizon disturbed the hornet’s nest when it unveiled its Verizon Unlimited plan, which prompted direct responses from T-Mobile, Sprint and AT&T (in that order). Now were hearing about another shakeup that could be coming down the line — a merger between Sprint and T-Mobile. We’ve heard talks about such a mashup before, but it appears that the big change this time around is that Sprint’s parent company, Japan's SoftBank, is willing to cede control of the company. The merger would bring together America’s third-place (T-Mobile) and fourth-place (Sprint) wireless carriers, putting the combined company in a better position to take on Verizon...
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There is a new wireless war taking place, and three of the four major U.S. carriers are actively engaged in fighting. It all started when Verizon Wireless announced that it was bringing back a new and reinvigorated unlimited data plan with included HD video streaming and 10GB of mobile hotspot data. T-Mobile countered by matching Verizon’s plan specifics and offering a lower monthly out-of-pocket cost. Now it’s Sprint’s turn to bring up arms against the competition. The company has announced that it will offer customers unlimited talk, text and data for $50 per month if you sign up for Sprint AutoPay. If you want two lines, it will only cost you $90 per month. Adding a third or fourth family...
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When you are in fourth place among the America’s top four wireless carriers, you need to do something to stand out from the crowd. If you can’t best your rivals on speed, service quality or coverage, the best target to aim for is pricing. Sprint is doubling down on its “value” positioning today with the announcement of a new promotion that provides five lines of data for just $90 per month. That $90 pricing will get you unlimited data, calling and texting for each line. In order to take advantage of the pricing, you will have to sign-up for AutoPay for the first line, after which you’ll pay $50 per month. Adding a second person takes the total to $90 per month. Adding the third, fourth and fifth...
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In the words of Young Hova, “I'm not a 'Businessman'! I'm a Business, man! Let me handle my business, damn!” Sprint just purchased a 33% stake in TIDAL, Jay-Z’s streaming music service. Estimates for the stake range greatly from between $33 to $225 million. TIDAL was a music streaming startup that had its origins in Norway, but was majority acquired by Jay-Z in 2015. Jay-Z relaunched the platform and offered high-definition audio with an emphasis on exclusive content from specific popular artists. TIDAL is currently available in 52 countries with with more than a 42.5 million song catalog and 140,000 high quality videos. Customers can pay $9.99 a month for regular content or $19.99 for high-definition...
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Computers may seem ubiquitous in 2016. Technology is particularly important in the classroom, however, many students cannot afford computers. Sprint and the Sprint Foundation have started the multi-year 1Million Project that aims to provide free mobile devices and high-speed wireless internet to one million economically disadvantaged high school students. Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure remarked, “Education is the foundation for our society to prosper, and the internet is an incredibly powerful tool for learning. But it’s a huge problem in America that we have 5 million households with children that lack internet connections…. All of us at Sprint are committed to changing this by providing 1 million...
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Customers that stuck by Samsung’s side during this tumultuous month involving battery-related Galaxy Note7 fires might be losing their patience, but fourth-place wireless carrier Sprint is doing everything in its power to make customers whole again. When reports of battery fires first flared up, customers were given the chance to get a refund, opt for a cheaper Galaxy S7/Galaxy S7 Edge, or get a replacement Galaxy Note7 that wasn’t prone to spontaneously combusting. However, as we saw this week with a supposedly “safe” replacement Galaxy Note7 catching fire on a [thankfully] parked Southwest plane, there are likely customers that have had enough at this point. Sprint says anyone that has received...
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Sprint just announced Unlimited Freedom Premium, the sister plan to their recently-launched Unlimited Freedom. The plan is targeted at customers who want to stream videos, music and games at a higher resolution. Unlimited Freedom Premium is intentionally supposed to undercut T-Mobile. Sprint’s Unlimited Freedom Premium plan offers high resolution streaming for $80 USD a month for one user or $140 a month for two. The plan provides HD streaming for videos at up to 1080p, HD music streaming at up to 1.5 Mbps, and gaming streaming at up to 8 Mbps. Unlimited talk and text are included. The deal is available for both existing and new customers. According to Sprint, its is the only carrier “to offer...
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Things are getting pretty nasty in the wireless carrier wars. Verizon Wireless and AT&T recently revamped their mobile plans with little fanfare — both companies juggled prices and data allotments while dropping overage charges (in exchange for throttled data speeds) in an effort to become more customer-friendly. T-Mobile fired back with T-Mobile ONE unlimited plans that seem great on the surface, but charge you extra for HD video streaming and full 4G LTE tethering speeds. But of course, T-Mobile CEO John Legere couldn’t announce the new plans without using inflammatory language, stating, “Dumb and Dumber can’t do this. They’ve been running away from unlimited data for years now, because...
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If you’re a fan of Google’s Project Fi hybrid wireless service, you’ll be happy to learn that the company is expanding network coverage with a third wireless carrier partner: U.S. Cellular. U.S. Cellular will join T-Mobile and Sprint, which have provided a patchwork of coverage across the United States for Project Fi subscribers since its inception. U.S. Cellular has service in 23 states, providing 4G LTE coverage to 99 percent of its subscribers in both rural and urban areas. The addition of a third wireless carrier is great news for those that were put off by the combined coverage are of T-Mobile and Sprint. While U.S. Cellular definitely isn’t as huge of an addition as a much larger players...
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For nearly a decade, Verizon ran a series of ads featuring actor Paul Marcarelli delivering the tagline, "Can you hear me now?" It's still a phrase that's familiar to many people, but in case you haven't heard, it's 2016 and apparently "every network is great," or so says the former Verizon pitchman who's made the switch to Sprint, the fourth largest carrier in the U.S. High profile defections in advertising sometimes happen, though it's not an everyday thing. For one, it requires a successful initial ad campaign, which Verizon certainly had. It also requires that the initial company that used a recurring pitch person maintain relevance long after the ad campaign has run its course, and again...
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Based on personal experience, Amazon Prime is pretty awesome. It's loaded with perks that go above and beyond the free two-day shipping that's offered on millions of items, though that's still the main benefit. I'm a also a Sprint subscriber, and if you're one too, you can subscribe to Amazon Prime through an add-on plan that runs $10.99 per month. Seems like a strange partnership, doesn't it? I'll admit there's a certain convenience to consolidating two separate payments (mobile phone and Amazon Prime) into a single monthly bill. There's also the benefit of spreading out your Amazon Prime membership fee into monthly chunks, and that seems to be the angle Sprint is pitching, along with how well...
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Following the terrorist bombings in Brussels on Tuesday that killed over 30 people and left many others injured, all four major wireless carriers in the United States—AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon— are offering customers free phone calling and text messaging services to Belgium for various periods of time. As it stands right now, Sprint is offering the longest period of free calls and texting. The wireless carrier said it will lift fees for calls and texts made from the U.S. to Belgium up through March 31. In addition, calling and texting charges for customers internationally roaming in Belgium will be waived. This applies to Sprint, Boost Mobile, Virgin Mobile USA, and Sprint Prepaid...
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T-Mobile CEO John Legere isn’t just content with passing Sprint to become America’s third largest wireless carrier. Legere is looking to kick dirt in Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure’s face and give him a purple nurple for good measure. Legere wants Sprint customers to jump on a winning team, so he is offering them an extra $200 — something that it is not offering to AT&T or Verizon Wireless customers — to switch to T-Mobile. In Legere’s words, he’s hoping to “brighten the holidays for Sprint customers.” The $200 comes in the form of a bill credit for each Sprint line that is transferred to the Un-carrier. You’ll need to sign up for one of T-Mobile’s postpaid Simple Choice plans, and the the offer...
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Tell me if you’ve heard this one before. Sprint is making another move to persuade customers from competing wireless carriers to hop over to its last place network, and it’s doing so by offering to cut their bills in half. Yep, this is the exact same deal that Sprint offered around this time last year, and it didn’t seem to work so well for the company the first time around. Yet here we are again. The promotion, which begins November 20th and lasts through January 7th, is slightly different in one aspect. Last year, the promotion was only open to customers on AT&T or Verizon Wireless. This time around, Sprint is extending an olive branch to T-Mobile customers as well (T-Mobile this year bypassed...
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Sprint employees may want to bargain with their children for a cut of their Halloween candy and bring their spoils to work. It's either that or pack some spare change for the vending machines. That's because Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure is is aggressively looking to cut costs, and one way he plans to do that is by eliminating free snacks for employees.It sounds like a trivial thing, but in the corporate world, it's those little things that can go a long way towards maintaining employee morale. Nevertheless, the snacks are gone, thus ending a perk that Claure implemented earlier this year. It's also a perk that would have cost Sprint around $600,000 per year.Overall, Sprint reported $26 billion in...
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Sprint boss Marcelo Claure wants you to do cartwheels over a new unlimited data plan that costs just $20 per month. On the surface, that sounds pretty enticing, doesn't it? The problem here is that the term "unlimited" really means 1GB of high-speed data -- once you go over that low threshold, you can kiss your 4G LTE speed goodbye and say hello to the painfully slow lane. After 1GB, Sprint's "Starter Unlimited Data Plan" bumps you down to 2G speeds until your next billing cycle. To add some perspective, Facebook on Wednesday implemented a thing called "2G Tuesdays" to give employees a taste of what it's like to use its app in an emerging market. The optional speed downgrade is supposed to serve...
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Oh no, a minority of insatiable data guzzling wireless users on Sprint's network are crowding up the joint and leaving no room for the other 97 percent of responsible users, something must be done! Right? Right!? We're paraphrasing a bit here, but that pretty much sums up the sentiment of Sprint's Chief Technology Officer, Dr. John Saw, who warned the wireless carrier's unlimited subscribers that using more than 23GB of data in any given month could have performance consequences. Sprint is implementing a real-time Quality of Service (QoS) scheme that kicks in when its cell sites are "constrained." When it's deemed that a cell site is huffing and puffing like an out of shape boxer in the 12th...
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Wireless carriers hate unlimited data plans with a passion. While they were a nice perk back in the days of the original iPhone when customers were stuck on slow EDGE (and later 3G) connections, carriers quickly found out that it could squeeze more from customers by selling them buckets of data instead. Verizon and AT&T no longer offer unlimited plans to new customers, leaving just T-Mobile and Sprint to carry on the unlimited torch. For those that were looking to signup for Sprint’s unlimited plan, you had better do so within the next two weeks before the company raises prices. The unlimited plan that currently costs customers $60/month will increase to $70/month starting October 16th....
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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is getting ready to auction valuable wireless spectrum to wireless carriers next March. It's a big opportunity for carriers to beef up their networks, though Sprint, the fourth largest wireless service provider in the U.S., isn't planning to participate. Sprint issued a statement saying it "thoroughly" analyzed the situation and determined it's already sitting on enough spectrum to serve its customers, both today and into the future. Rather than allocate funds towards the purchase of more spectrum, Sprint feels it's more important to focus its resources on densifying and adding more cell sites capable of tapping into its existing spectrum. "Sprint’s...
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Let me tell you something, Edwin Starr had it wrong when he concluded that war was good for "absolutely nothing," at least as a blanket statement. In the wireless world, carriers at war with each other is good for consumers. It's how we end up with offers like Sprint's latest iPhone Forever deal, which for a limited time is offering the iPhone 6s starting at $1 per month. Sprint is looking to trump T-Mobile and its "unbeatable $5 per month offer on iPhone 6s" announced just yesterday as part of its JUMP! ON Demand program. Not to be outdone, Sprint countered with what it says is the "world's best offer on iPhone 6s." Beginning Friday morning, Sprint-branded retail stores will offer the iPhone...
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It appears that AT&T isn’t the only wireless company celebrating its acquisition of satellite TV provider DirecTV. Earlier this month, AT&T courted DirecTV customers currently attached to other wireless carriers with the promise of up to $500 in account credits if they signed up for wireless service. Sprint, now finding itself in last place among the “big four” U.S. wireless carriers, is also looking to exploit the “odd couple” pairing of AT&T and DirecTV. Sprint is promoting a one-time offer that gives DirecTV customers that switch to Sprint a full year of service for free. That’s right folks, Sprint is digging down deep into its reserves to reclaim third place from T-Mobile. Of...
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