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It's over for T-Mobile & Sprint. It's the iPhones fault

M

macinnv

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 17, 2011
223
0
Phoenix, AZ
First off, this is all my own opinion. We all know the ATT/T-Mobile merger will go through, at worst with just a few small hurdles. While it may or not be good for consumers, it's great for the both of them. T-Mobile couldnt survive without the iPhone, ATT needs towers.

Sprint has released their quarterly results today and while it's better than before, they are still operating at a loss. I dont think they can survive or ever turn a profit without the iPhone. I dont think Apple will ever choose them either. That eventually leads to just 2 US carriers in just a few more years. At that point it will just be 'psuedo-competition'. And it's all because of the iPhone.
 
You act like this is a good thing.

The phone market needs competition, whether it be for phones or carriers. I love my iPhone, but I'm not sure how much I will like it when there are only two major carriers in the US and they are capping my bandwidth and blocking services like Netflix.
 
DeaconGraves said:
You act like this is a good thing.

The phone market needs competition, whether it be for phones or carriers. I love my iPhone, but I'm not sure how much I will like it when there are only two major carriers in the US and they are capping my bandwidth and blocking services like Netflix.
Click to expand...


Ahhh he did say that it was good for the phone companies and not the consumers. Being that he is a consumer, I dont think he thinks this is a good thing.
 
I'm surprised Sprint is still in business. I still remember when Sprint bought out Nextel..... what a flop that turned out to be.
 
macinnv said:
Sprint has released their quarterly results today and while it's better than before, they are still operating at a loss. I dont think they can survive or ever turn a profit without the iPhone. I dont think Apple will ever choose them either. That eventually leads to just 2 US carriers in just a few more years. At that point it will just be 'psuedo-competition'. And it's all because of the iPhone.
Click to expand...

No, if Sprint goes under, it's entirely Sprint's fault.

Sprint was losing money and customers long, long before the iPhone was ever announced, and they set their course to failure years before any of this. They made a lot of dumb decisions and these past few years of losing money and customers is a result of that.

What bad decisions? Where to begin...

- The Sprint/Nextel merger. Because some genius at Sprint though that buying a carrier with an outdated, completely incompatible network was a good idea. Then promising to shut it down or sell it. Then changing their minds. Twice.

- WiMax. Because that same genius thought that the way to solve the two-incompatible networks problem was to create a third network that was incompatible with the other two. Then rebrand it. Then try to sell it. Then when no one wanted to buy it, split it off as another company. Then go into a partnership with that company. Then get into legal disagreements over payment of fees with that same company.

- Attracting lots and lots of bad credit customers with lax or no deposit requirements, then acting surprised when these same customers run up high bills and then don't pay them, then write off those customers, losing money and subscribers. Then, when they don't get enough good-credit customers because of the stigma Sprint has earned as a "ghetto" carrier, go back and attract more bad-credit customers a second time and using "Account Spending Limits" instead of deposits.... and then act all surprised all over again when they don't pay their bills. Then, "solve" the issue by aggressively putting the same segment of people on pre-paid services like Boost Mobile.

There's more, and I can go on and on: the "affiliate" debacle, the "Nextel partners" lawsuit, the failed merger with MCI Worldcom. I was a Sprint customer for 8 years, and saw all of this go down. The management at Sprint for a long time was only interested in how they can make the numbers look good that quarter, and forget about the future. And now, it's the future, and they're paying for it.

Yeah, Sprint's brass can point to the iPhone, but the stats don't lie: they're gaining CDMA customers, but are massively bleeding customers on the poorly-run Nextel network, which they had no business buying and have no business running. And, they're settling legal disputes with Clearwire, the WiMAX venture.

Let me ask you this: would you want an iPhone on the Nextel network, with it's blazingly fast 56kbps data network? Probably not. And I don't see why Apple would, either. If there's any reassn someone can point to for not having an exclusive iPhone on Sprint, it's because of the complete mess that company has been turned into by the people at the top.
 
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im not in the US but surely entire networks can't fall because of a single phone?


In the UK O2 was the single supplier of the iPhone for (i think) 3 years and the other networks (Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile, 3) all survived. Sure they may have lost a few customers but still grew overall,

Surely any networks that fails can't blame a phone and should blame themselves?
 
I hope sprint makes it, I can put up with managing the battery on my EVO to have everything unlimited.
 
I hope they survive. I use Time Warner Cable Mobile (aka Sprint lite lol) for all my mobile data including iPhone and iPad. Unlimited 3G and 4G for $50 can't be really beat. If they go under then I'll have to go back to getting $#%@ed by The Man.
 
I'm sure they'll do fine without the iPhone. There's never been a time when a cell phone carrier dies off just because they don't carry the hottest phone on the market.
 
Operator monopolies can be a good thing or a bad thing. I lived in Dubai for a while and they had only one carrier at the time (two now); good thing about this was that perhaps because they had such a large customer base (presumably) and were the only carrier, the prices on plans were excellent. They could have done some damage by leveraging their position and being greedy. I hope this merger, if it goes through, leads to better service/prices. Thay way both Tmo and At&t customers (even those against the merger right now) will be happy.
 
I wasnt trying to say this was a good thing, rather I was just stating what I see happening. Like scaredpoet mentioned, Sprint is where they are today partly because of their own stupid business decisions. T-Mobile is too. While I dont have the figures in front of me, I believe both Sprint or T-Mobile havent turned much of a profit since the release of the iPhone 3G. Neither are in any position for long-term growth.

With 2 market players, I suppose there is still some competition. Coke vs. Pepsi being a prime example. However, they seem work in tandem to keep prices even and gradually raise them over time.
 
Sprint - Stupid People Reactively Introducing Network Troubles

disclaimer - former Sprint employee
 
The thing with sprint is, I think they actually make more money leasing their service out to other "carriers" than they do by selling the sprint name. A lot of small, ummm.... "urban" carriers piggyback off of sprints towers since they don't have any of their own.

I remember a few years back before the android/iPhone war began sprint had the coolest damn phones but the crappiest network. In a lot of ways they were ahead of the game but when the smartphone boom really started going nuts they really just had blackberry and most people had been there/done that.
 
Sprint made the wrong move with Nextel.

Now, they're running two distinct networks that are incompatible with each other; not to mention, they are both inferior. They should have just spent their own money improving the network.

I know Sprint has excellent coverage on some places, but to be honest, it kind of sucks. I'm suppose to get "amazing" coverage as per Sprint's websites but I know that data speeds on average is more or less 0.2 Mb/s and that calls are always getting cut.
 
Funkymonk said:
why couldn't tmobile survive without the iphone?
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there's no saying wether they could or couldn't survive without the iPhone...all we know is they couldn't survive without being bought by AT&T (because if the deal doesn't go through, they get TONS of money AND spectrum, so even without the merger, they are getting what they need to survive because of AT&T)
 
There are three carriers in Switzerland, Swisscom, Orange and Sunrise. All with the iPhone and all doing well in a country of only about 8 million.
 
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