4th Quarter, 2007 Results

This is expected wow.

 

Nice way to complicate the net figure. Let's see if I got it right:

500,000 + 256,000 + 20,000 = 776,000

(-683,000) + (-202,000) = -885,000

776,000 - 885,000 = -109,000

So if I understood this correctly, they had a net loss of 109,000 customers. Right?

 

I thought the voluntary versus involuntary churn numbers were interesting. I hadn't thought about making a distinction before. The better voluntary numbers could be a sign of hope especially if the involuntary churn reduces the number of high maintenance users.

 

I don't understand that. What's involuntary churn? Does that mean that the customers didn't want to switch from Sprint but they did anyway? What kind of customer switches from a carrier if they don't want to?

 

This is usually the part where somebody comes in as a "Sprint Basher" and is quickly dismissed as a "sky is falling-chicken little" The numbers are coming out in the hundreds of thousands of lost subscriptions, this is not "Sprint-Bashing", these are hard-fact lost customers that ALL have a story.

Customer service? I once had a car salesman literally bash the new car I was buying into the side of a service bay! One would suppose this would be the worst consumer event that ever happened to me.... It doesn't even come close to antics of Sprint - You see, the difference was that the car dealership quickly acted to "fix the problem" and knew what it had to do, and did it. Sprint is completely incapable of this but yet nobody that runs Sprint addresses this horrendous problem!

Unfortunately for Sprint, their complete disregard for fixing a simple problem led to a cancellation of this subscriber, potentially thousands of dollars but it's worse than that.... An immediate and quick liquidation of any stock we had in our portfolio, never to be purchased again.

Naysaying a Sprint Basher?, go ahead. What about hundreds of thousands of them?

 

I believe involuntary churn might include things such as accounts canceled by Sprint (for non-payment, as an example).

 

And ones canceled for calling customer service too much.:O

 

Regardless of their declining numbers the fact remains that Sprint still has over 50 million customers and a great product to offer if they can solve the other problems like customer service, IDEN and marketing. Just because they aren't adding customers like the other carriers doesn't mean they still can't be a good choice for many people. The negative financial reports don't affect my great service that I've had for 10 years and still enjoy. Not everyone dislikes the company or the service.

Also let's please keep this discussion from getting hostile. Everyone has their own opinions but there's no need for anyone to try to instigate trouble by using unfriendly tones/words or trying to set up an argument which can escalate into flaming.

 

I still don't understand Sprint's continued use of their "Sprint Speed" campaign. The commercials are lame. If you pick any Sprint ad, and then compare it to Verizon's ad for the LG Voyager...can you really wonder why people want to bail on Sprint or won't consider them to begin with? The Verizon commercial screams "cool" whereas Sprint's ads are very...out there.

 

Wirelessly posted (LG-LX350 AU-MIC-LX350/2.0 MMP/2.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1)

I agree Sprint Speed is lame and should be canned asap.

 

Yeah those numbers seem right to me.

 

Does anyone know what the results release dates are for the other carriers?

 

the number one complaint i hear with sprint is the lack of any kind of significant in network footprint. roaming is all fine and good, you will at least be able to call, but lets face it, with CDMA, and the lack of data usage while roaming, sprint customers are getting shafted in many areas, if they have reception at all.

 

Eric, I can data roam on Alltel or Verizon with Sprint, depending upon which carrier they happen to have an agreement with in a particular location.

Your post actually highlights Sprint's biggest problem...people think you cannot data roam, they think Sprint has a small coverage area, they think there is something wrong with roaming.

I don't care if I am on Sprint or Alltel...my phone works just the same and I can still use data, so why should I care how big a particular carriers footprint may be? Aside from localized dead spots, which every carrier has, I have never been anywhere in this country that my Sprint phone would not work, but a GSM phone would. That's not to say such places do not exist, but if they don't exist in "my world" that is all that I care about.

Incidentally, I notice you live in Columbus. Ohio? I used to live there too. Did you always have at&t or did you have Cingular before they merged? If you had Cingular in Columbus, you had the worst carrier in town. AT&T was always excellent in Columbus though. My point is simply that in different places, different companies are good. Of course, the average user hears from their friend across the country that Sprint sucks, so they think the same is the where they live.

Sprint needs to work on fixing its reputation before it does anything else, IMO

 

Deutsche Telekom's (T-Mobile) 2007 figures are due out February 28, 2008.

 

Sprint has great data roaming agreements with Alltel, Verizon and other CDMA carriers. That is definetly not a problem for Sprint.

I also disagree on the lack of a native network. Sprint does just fine covering the majority of the population in the US (about 262 million) and most customers are fine in that regard. Even if Sprint customers have to rely on roaming once in a while it is included in most plans and just about all features should work fine. But I will say it is false perception like this that hurts Sprint. Sprint needs to start a better advertising campaign touting all of their features and products so people can know what they're getting.

 

CDMA covers more of the country then GSM and data works while roaming on most other cdma carriers.

 

If Western Wireless would have Choose GSM instead of CDMA as its core technolgy then the role would have been reversed. Hopefully GSM carriers will get some 700 mhz and catch up in the mountain and plain states.

 

Yeah, and there are only two big gsm carriers. While there are 4 big cdma.

 

AT&T: Thursday Jan. 24th: AT&T- News Room

Verizon: Monday Jan. 28th: Verizon | Investor Relations

 

AT&T Delivers Strong Fourth Quarter, Reaffirms 2008 and Multi-Year Outlook

Results Highlighted by Record Wireless Gains, Significant Step Up in Enterprise Services Growth


$0.51 reported earnings per diluted share compared with $0.50 in the year-earlier fourth quarter
$0.71 adjusted earnings per diluted share, up 16.4 percent from $0.61 in the fourth quarter of 2006

2.7 million net gain in wireless subscribers, best-ever quarterly increase by any U.S. wireless company; 70.1 million wireless subscribers at year's end

16.3 percent increase in total wireless revenues with wireless data revenues up a robust 57.5 percent

Further ramp in enterprise customer trends with recurring service revenues up 1.8 percent, driven by a 20.9 percent increase in revenues from IP-based data services such as virtual private networking, hosting and managed Internet services

Stable regional revenue trends with double-digit broadband growth and a further ramp in AT&T U-verseSM TV subscribers: 231,000 in service at year's end, up from 126,000 three months earlier

Note: AT&T's fourth-quarter earnings conference call will be broadcast live via the Internet at 10 a.m. EST on Thursday, Jan. 24, 2008 at AT&T - Investor Relations.

AT&T- News Room

 

Wow, that's pretty incredible.

 

WOW! I guess changing the name to AT&T wasn't a bad idea after all.

 

Damn that is very good thank goodness for the iphone to help that out some.

 

I can't say I'm surprised by AT&T's 2.7 million net additions for the 4th quarter. I remember last year they did about the same (2.6 million net adds) as well. Still, they are doing very well.

It will be interesting to see how Verizon does compared to this...

 

maybe it is the region im in. im actually in the southeast, GA/AL area. Sprints reputation, and service here is in the pits for where we are here i guess. Verizon dominates as they hold most of the Cellular licenses with ATT a second and TMOB 3rd and ALLTEL and SPRINT bringing in the rear. i suppose it is just an area thing as sprint customers here that dont live directly in the city or off the highway are pretty much without service, or are roaming. roaming agreements or not, service is never optimal roaming. not to mention excessive off network will get you the boot from any company. im not knocking sprint, in fact i thought about getting a SERO plan if someone wants to drop me a referral for that lol...i spend most of my time in town and it should be fine for me.