
Inside the Plan to Pull Sprint Out of Its Death Spiral - prostoalex
http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-how-to-fix-sprint/
======
exabrial
Step 0) fire all corporate teams not directly related to core product: data.
Get rid of ridiculous app development teams, teams that run things like the
MAG, proxies, etc. None of these things are necessary. If you have a team
that's writing your own VPN client, you're doing business wrong.

Step 1) fire all of middle and upper management in corporate

Step 2) fire all of middle and upper management on the retail side

Step 3) bring in a team of silicon valley tech managers for remaining tech
teams for now flat organization

Step 4) bring in a select few retail managers that won't have the us vs them
attitude about corporate

Step 5) sell the damn campus in OP. Target should be about 1000 corp employees
max and there's plenty of commercial real estate in KC that'd fit the bill.

Step 6) sell data centers, anything that can't be cohosted somewhere else

Step 7) have engineers creating a backhaul network that is focused on
simplicity, distribution, and redundancy. Piping all traffic back to overland
park is stupid (as was the case in their WiMax 4g)

Step 8) Fire vendors. All of them. Sprint is a slut spending money with third
party products. Switch to open source everything.

~~~
Zigurd
As you point out, it should be possible. The other MNOs think they are in a
business other than moving bits. They are doing what are at best superfluous
acquisitions like AOL. They think they can "add value." At best they can
subtract value and charge you not to.

Seeing through this delusion should be an obvious competitive advantage. But
you have to behave like you mean it. More bits, more predictable performance,
fewer gotchas, for less money is what MNOs should be selling.

There's another way to zig where others are zagging: Create product offerings
lined up with key ecosystems. There is the beginning of this in Sprint's
participation in Project Fi.

------
beau26
I've been on Sprint since 2006. Granted, the one thing that has kept me around
is the plan I have ($50 / month for unlimited text, data, etc, etc). The
service, generally, has gotten much better over the last few years and I
cannot justify doubling my bill to move to a provider that is only
incrementally better.

~~~
edwhitesell
I've been on Sprint since 2004 and agree on the plan keeping me around: You
just can't beat unlimited everything for the prices they offer.

However, I did recently switch my wife's low-usage phone over to ting.
Identical service, as it runs on Sprint's network, but only cost $14 last
month. I will probably switch my phone over as well, which should drop my bill
to around $30/month.

------
mason240
Are there any accurate tools out there for comparing networks?

I used to have Sprint, but switched to Verizon in 2013 because they had poor
coverage in the Twin Cities, and no coverage in outstate Minnesota. Now I want
to switch back because of cost, but I'd like to get an accurate idea of the
coverage.

~~~
rz2k
I'm not sure how accurate the data are, but take a look at opensignal.com.

~~~
MrApathy
Their coverage maps offer a good indication as to what to expect in a general
area, but they lack the precision necessary to perform due diligence before
making a switch.

I work in Manhattan, where I've twice had the misfortune of occupying a
cubicle in the exact center of a building. Both T-Mobile and AT&T report full
coverage for the entire area, but the many micro dead spots in homes and
offices can be a real problem. T-Mobile in particular licenses spectrum that
can't penetrate walls as well as some other parts of the spectrum.

I'm sure there's a startup for providing user sourced coverage data at a very
granular level, though it would be difficult to deal with the constant changes
the carriers are making to their networks.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Do you have a phone that'll use WiFi for cellular? Most office buildings are
effectively faraday cages. On T-Mobile, my phone will route SMS and calls from
my iPhone over whatever WiFi network I'm on, so network quality in dense areas
becomes less of a concern for me (except when I'm mobile; but then, I'm out in
the open, so signal quality is better).

------
phjesusthatguy3
Is Sprint still on iDEN or did they sell that off to USGOV some time last
decade? I'm in Northern Lower Michigan and was on Sprint a long time ago. The
cell coverage was terrible but the direct connect feature was rock-solid. I
sort-of miss it.

~~~
jhowison
Sprint Nextel provided iDEN service across the United States until its iDEN
network was decommissioned on 30 June 2013.
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDEN#Operators](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDEN#Operators))

------
mholmes680
I'm officially still a nerd. I thought this was going to be about Agile
Sprints. Need more coffee.

------
soylentcola
I can only speak from the customer's perspective but I think of Sprint the way
I used to think of TMobile: a more affordable alternative to the children of
the Baby Bells (ATT and Verizon) that can offer a better deal since they're
competing against bigger players.

For probably 10 years I used Sprint because they consistently offered the best
price and perks despite not having bought up as much coverage in some areas as
VZW and ATT. When I used a flip phone in the early 2000's I could get service
for dirt cheap. A few hundred minutes plus a few hundred texts (back when
those were itemized money makers for carriers) for $30/mo. When I got my first
smart phone, a Treo 650, unlimited data was another $10 or $15/mo addon which
brought my total to around $40-45/mo.

I never worried about minutes because Sprint didn't count any calls made on
weekends, any calls made after 7pm, or even any calls to/from any cell phone
of any carrier against your balance. Early on, the data speeds only allowed me
to check email, sync calendars, and stream 128k/s Shoutcast streams in the car
but I already felt like it was "futuristic" while friends were paying monthly
fees for XM Radio or pricey Blackberry plans.

With my second smartphone (an HTC PocketPC running Windows Mobile) I got GPS
navigation, unlimited 3G service at around 600-800k/sec, and all the cool
stuff that came along with it like the ability to stream live TV from my PC
with a tuner card at home. Data was still unlimited and my monthly bills were
under $50. As a longer-term customer, I got a new phone subsidy every year
instead of every two years at a time when there was no real benefit to going
without a contract to save money.

Coverage in rural areas wasn't anywhere near as good as the bigger carriers
but I lived in the city and Sprint roamed for free on Verizon towers so I
could always make and receive calls. As the non-early-adopters started buying
smartphones, I was always amazed that friends were paying upwards of $90/mo
for iPhones on ATT with limited data and 2G speeds.

When WiMax debuted, our city was on the list of the initial rollout cities and
I was using my phone as a WiFi hotspot to get (at the time) amazing 5-8mbps
speeds anywhere I went. Video calls and live streaming video were now a thing
and even though the monthly cost jumped from $45 to $60 it was still cheaper
than alternatives.

But then they got rid of yearly subsidies. And the prices went up as they
reorganized their tiers so that the cheapest plan I could get included more
minutes that I could ever use with no way to buy less. $80/mo was creeping
dangerously close to ATT/VZW prices. I still had unlimited data but over time,
those 5-8mbps speeds weren't showing up on my actual phone. I was in a full
coverage area with excellent signal but lucky to break 1mbps during the day.

It was a tough time to be a Sprint loyalist as service was becoming more
expensive and less reliable. The tipping point for me was the Nexus 5 and
TMobile's semi-hidden prepaid options. In the past Tmo had seemed like it was
roughly the same in terms of cost but they had less coverage. But now I could
buy a good phone off contract for $350 and pay only $30/mo for a 5GB data
allotment with 100 minutes (which is still more than I use normally but much
better than paying for hundreds).

When my Sprint contract expired I made the switch over to TMo and cut my bill
in half. I've got WiFi coverage at home and at work so I never go over 5GB
these days. If I run out of minutes for some weird reason, it's a quick couple
of taps and $10 to add another 100 minutes. If Tmo ever pisses me off I can
just buy a SIM from someone else and be ready to go. And the only downside is
that I get no service in more remote areas.

But since I am in the city for 98% of the year, I figured it was a worthwhile
tradeoff. Data speeds are excellent and I'm not stuck in a contract paying
2-3x as much for unwanted services. I don't know what it will take for Sprint
to bounce back short of a TMo-like reinvention. The problem is that the things
that attract me as a customer (cheap, fast, contract-free dumb pipes) are not
the things that make loads of money for carriers. If they are able to leverage
the amount of fiber and spectrum they own at good terms for customers, I'd
gladly consider them again. But for the time being, I haven't felt like I was
getting this good a deal since my early days with Sprint.

~~~
flyinghamster
Also keep in mind that T-Mobile's rural coverage has been rapidly improving,
especially in the last six months or so. Northern Michigan (north of a line
roughly from Muskegon to Bay City) used to be exclusively AT&T roaming
coverage, and further south there were some large coverage holes with no
service (e.g. around Hastings). Now, almost the entire Lower Peninsula is
covered, and the few remaining gaps are being filled in.

A big reason for this, in Michigan at least, is that they have a chunk of 700
MHz spectrum; this is what they term their "extended range" LTE coverage.

In Illinois, they don't have any 700 to speak of, but they're still building
out new coverage in places where there was only roaming (such as the Macomb
area). Their joint venture in Iowa (iWireless) is also lighting up LTE on
their network. I've also run into brand-new coverage in western Indiana. They
clearly want to cut AT&T roaming to the barest minimum.

In areas where T-Mobile has 700 MHz coverage, you'll need an up-to-date
handset to receive it - something you should consider if you were planning on
switching an unlocked phone to them.

