All Posts Tagged With: "sprint"
The Pitch – Would you pay your early termination fee in order to get a great phone/plan on another network?
Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Fri, Nov 06 2009 | 0 Comments
Would you pay the ETF to get a new phone?
Question:
A cellular carrier’s early termination fee is typically around $200; Verizon just upped how much it charges for an ETF if the user has a smart phone. Would you be willing to pay the ETF to get a new cell phone?
Answer:
It really depends no how much I want the phone and how much I would be able to sell my current phone for. I would also have to be getting a good deal on whatever plan I was moving to because right now my Sprint plan is only $59.99 per month for unlimited data, unlimited texts, unlimited mobile to mobile calling (on any network), and 500 anytime minutes per month with free nights and weekends that start at 7 pm.
There is a way, however, to purchase a phone from someone else, like on eBay, and sell my own. For example (and this only works when you want a phone with your current carrier), I have a Palm Pre and want a HTC Hero; I could sell my Pre on eBay and buy a Hero also. The difference is about $100, which is cheaper than an ETF and I don’t have to extend my contract.
As enticing as the Motorola Droid looks, I don’t think I’ll be switching carriers for it.
Have an idea or want us to use your pitch in the next issue? Then, make a submission on The Pitch Page. Related posts:
Is T-Mobile Planning “Project Dark”?
The Battle of the Prepaid cellular prices continues
Tags: hero, etf, sprint
AT&T has sued Verizon for “map” ads.
Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Wed, Nov 04 2009 | 0 CommentsAT&T is taking the “there’s a map for that ads” to heart, I suppose. Just a few weeks after the ads started showing up all over the television, AT&T has sued Verizon Wireless for the ads.
The suit says that the ads are misleading and can lead a customer to believe that AT&T has large coverage gaps. The truth is, the ads show the 3G coverage gaps and Verizon puts that in large letters at the bottom of the map when AT&T’s map and Verizon’s map are put side by side in the ad.
AT&T is also looking into getting a temporary restraining order against Verizon for the ads. It is claiming that the ads has caused the company to lose market share.
I would say that AT&T needs to shut up and instead of fighting the claims, do something that actually fixes their network. Every time I read about AT&T, it is bad. Usually, no one has anything good to say about AT&T’s network and the only reason that the company is number 2 in the United States is because it was able to get iPhone exclusivity.
The map of AT&T’s 3G coverage is accurate. There isn’t a lot of 3G coverage across the country and a lot of times, it is slow. It really hasn’t done a lot in the past few years to increase the amount of coverage or speed either. While you can get AT&T coverage in areas that aren’t on the map, the 3G coverage isn’t great…or even good in my opinion. Sprint has more 3G coverage. I think the only company that has as little coverage as AT&T is T-Mobile.
Related posts:Could we be seeing the end of AT&T and iPhone exclusivity?
Verizon really wants people to know that it is getting the Motorola Droid phone
Tags: coverage gaps, verizon, t mobile
Sprint lost nearly half a billion dollars in the third quarter
Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Thu, Oct 29 2009 | 0 Comments
Sprint can’t keep itself from hemorrhaging money as well as customers. The nation’s third largest retailer announced their third quarter earnings and they obviously weren’t too great.
As subscribers dropped the carrier, it found itself losing $478 million, 17 cents per share. This is a greater loss than the company saw in the third quarter last year of $326 million, or 11 cents per share.
The loss the company had was greater than what analysts were expecting. The majority were expecting an average loss of 15 cents per share.
The net operating revenue for the company was also down to $8.04 billion. This represents a 9 percent drop from the $8.82 billion it was making last year during the same quarter.
So, where did the money go? I would guess it followed the 545,000 wireless customers it lost during the last quarter alone. The company actually lost 801,000 post paid Sprint subscribers, but 801,000 signed up for its Boost Mobile prepaid service.
When the dust settled, Sprint was left with 48.3 million subscribers. There is a pretty large gap between Sprint and its next biggest competitor; AT&T Wireless (which currently has over 80 million subscribers. However, it is still ahead of the smaller T-Mobile cellular provider with just over 32.8 million customers.
It’s not all bad news for the company, however. In its earning statement for the third quarter, Sprint also talked about how it has had improvement in customer care satisfaction for the past 7 consecutive quarters as well as opening its 4G network to 17 different markets, and it has launched (and will be launching) 16 new touchscreen, full keyboard smart phones.
In my honest opinion, Sprint has bent over backwards to keep a lot of their subscribers happy. I don’t know what they’re doing to lose so many subscribers, but I would imagine it has something to do with the company’s phone lineup. I can’t imagine it being the actual network because (at least in my opinion) the service is great anywhere I go. I even had reception in a basement on the college campus near me while my friend with an iPhone did not.
Related posts:Bank of America has another loss for 3rd Quarter; Ken Lewis won’t be getting Paid this year
Ford suprises everyone by posting a big profit for the 3rd quarter
Tags: sprint, satisfaction, cellular provider
The Battle of the Prepaid cellular prices continues
Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Thu, Oct 15 2009 | 0 Comments
Wal-Mart is getting in on the prepaid craze. With AT&T offering a unlimited talk and text plan for $60 per month, someone had to come around and step up their game.
Wal-Mart is starting up it’s own “Straight Talk” service that will ride off of TracFone’s service. The service starts at just $30 per month and a user can get unlimited talk, text AND DATA for $45 per month.
The service goes on sale starting October 18th. It will offer not only nationwide coverage, but it will also offer unlimited 411 usage.
Of course, like most other prepaid carriers, the phone options will be quite limited. You won’t see any cutting edge phones avaiable for purchase on any of these types of services. That probably has something to do with how cheap the plans plus data are. If everyone had an iPhone or another more advanced phone on the plan, then it would eat data and Wal-Mart would likely be losing money. However, with the not-as-advanced phones, these are great options for text-happy teenagers.
With prepaid plans like these popping up, I can definitely see post paid plans taking a hit. These aren’t just regional plans, they are nationwide plans with great coverage. For example AT&T is one of the only carriers that have coverage at my parent’s house in rural Mississippi. I was completely in the dark when I had T-Mobile and went to visit them.
I would like to see more competition with post-paid plans because that’s where the more desirable phones are. That’s what I’m after in the end…I want good coverage and a great phone for a reasonable price. That’s why I’m with Sprint. The price really overcame the company’s phone selection and the coverage is awesome when compared to the T-Mobile phone I had previously.
Would you switch from your post paid plan to a prepaid plan to get in on the deals? How about you prepaid plan people…How do you like your service? How much does a more advanced phone matter to you?
Related posts:AT&T opens up prepaid unlimited wireless service for $60/mo.
Is T-Mobile Planning “Project Dark”?
Tags: Money, investor, wal mart
Palm Pre review
Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Mon, Jun 08 2009 | 1 Comment
After Palm first introduced us to the Pre at CES in January, I was immediately interested in it and have been waiting for it to come out ever since. As a Sprint user, there has never been many phones that I would call “revolutionary” on their network, until now.
Palm, who many people had written off, introduced the new device and it’s very capable WebOS operating system at CES and it has been creating some buzz among the gadget geek community ever since.
Finally, the phone was released on June 6th, and I managed to pick one up.
My initial thoughts on the phone are that it is pretty in its design. It is very smooth, but I haven’t had any issues with dropping it or it being slippery. The slide out keyboard is small to some, but I’m coming from a Centro and the keyboard on the Pre is much better than what I have become accustomed to. Overall the phone feels very solid and the slide out mechanism is built very well.
The operating system is great, however, there are some things that make it obvious that this is a “1.0″ device and in the next few months there will be over the air updates and many more apps that will hopefully make the phone exceed expectations. I think that, while the phone is very good, it was not ready for “primetime.” It was released without the software development kit in the hands of many people and as a result the “App Catalog” only has 18 apps in it as of today. The apps include Soduku, Accuweather, Tweed (a Twitter application), and Pandora. While they all work wonderfully, there are so few of them.
While it may not matter to some, the 3.2 megapixel camera on the Pre is amazing compared to other camera phones I have had. The quality is excellent for a camera phone, even in poor lighting it is still ok, not excellent, just ok. There isn’t a video recording program for it yet, but Palm has said that it will have one out very soon.
On to the actual touch function! The touch sensitivity is very good. In my opinion it is on par with the iPhone. The gesture controls are extremely fluid and I haven’t had any troubles with zooming in and out of web pages or pictures. The accelerometer in the phone also changes the screen from portrait to landscape mode very quickly.
Of all the things that are great about this phone, I only have a couple of complaints:
The “cloud” that sometimes appears at the bottom of the screen can be annoying. Some are saying that it is from the phone getting hot. I just think that it needs to be fixed. This is by far my biggest complaint about this phone.
While this is actually a problem with Sprint and not Palm, not having a roaming only option doesn’t make me happy because my Sprint coverage isn’t wonderful at home.
You can’t change the message alerts as of right now…Meaning the sound that your phone makes when you get at text message can’t be changed.
Related posts:Citigroup: Sell Palm, RIM and buy Motorola
Verizon really wants people to know that it is getting the Motorola Droid phone
Tags: sprint, tweed, gadget geek
