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.

AT&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.

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.

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?

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.

Some are calling it the Centro 2 and some are calling it the “mini-Pre.”

It is set to debut in the fall of this year, according to Engadget anyway.

In my opinion Palm should be more focused on the Pre and getting that phone out and publicized. The rumors are floating around that the phone will be coming out on May 17th on Sprint, coinciding with the season finale of Survivor.

Again, Palm’s success is riding on WebOS and the phones associated with the operating system.

How can Sprint and the Palm Pre compete with AT&T and the iPhone?

Question:

With Sprint coming out with the Palm Pre in just a month or two, what does it need to be able to do to directly compete with the iPhone?

Answer:

In my opinion the Palm Pre will be Palm’s saving grace. The Centro has enjoyed some very positive publicity for the company, who could really use some good publicity right now. Sprint also needs the phone to do well and is hyping it up to be the greatest phone to ever come to the carrier.

The phone itself needs to be able to do everything the iPhone can do and more. It HAS to be fluid in gestures, meaning no lagging between applications. It has to be reliable and be generally easy to use.

This phone is positioned to be the make or break phone for Palm. Hopefully, everything will go right for Palm and Sprint and this phone will be the huge success they are hoping for.

So after a stroll in the park with Mr. Hesse, Sprint has decided to end that campaign and start a new one.

Hesse said that he was trying to “humanize” the Sprint name after it was tarnished “by the Nextel merger.” IMO, Sprint’s name was not tarnished by the Nextel merger rather than poor customer service and inaccurate billing. (There have been several people tell me that they switched to a different carrier from Sprint just because not once in their 2 year contract was the bill right)

My guess is that the new ads will feature Sprint’s new phone lineup, namely the Palm Pre?

Today Sprint posted a loss of 1.3 million customers in the 4th quarter, but because the loss wasn’t as bad as some thought it was going to be, the stock price actually rose today (by 19%).

Hopefully Sprint can get it together when the Palm Pre comes out. That is looking like one of the devices that could greatly benefit the company. What’s even better for Sprint is that the phone is exclusive to it until at least the end of 2009. At the same time, I’m sure that Palm has more devices in the works to push to other carriers.

I think it’s funny that you only ever hear bad news about Sprint. I think it’s because it used to be the best, now it’s 3rd. While T-Mobile can’t get enough to beat Sprint in numbers, it still isn’t “picked on” as much as Sprint is…

The phone will be offered on Sprint at first, but a GSM model will be coming out in the future.

This is from the Sprint website:

I couldn’t agree more. When compared to ads like AT&T’s melting snowman or exploding turkey or even Alltel’s clay caricatures of the other cell company’s sales reps, Sprints ads of Dan Hesse walking through the street or sitting at a diner are boring. With him also saying very obvious or generic things like, this could be the only phone you ever need… There really isn’t a lot of draw to the ailing cellular company.

I think Verizon did a better job with a guy walking around asking “Can you hear me now?”At least it was memorable

Source

I only know one person who still has a RAZR. I was recently put in a group for a management project, out of 6 people, I was the only one without an iPhone (I have Sprint, and a Palm Centro). I have thought that the RAZR has been sliding down the popularity list for a couple of years now…I’m really interested in new cell phones, though, so maybe I think some headsets should be more popular than they are…Touch Pro…

So what’s wrong with Sprint?

As a Sprint subscriber (yes, I know. I should probably go into hiding for admitting that now), I am disappointed with the marketing tactics used. Sure, maybe in political advertising attacking your opponent doesn’t work, but when you’re trying to gain some market share in the cellular industry, sometimes you have to point out every weakness of your competitor. Look at Verizon…they are one of the top 2 cellular companies in the US, and their ads are specifically targeting Sprint. Poor little Sprint Why wouldn’t Verizon pick on At&t? Well, I believe that Verizon is trying to move as many CDMA (At&t is GSM) customers to its side as possible…

If Verizon Wireless can put Sprint out of business, that is one less carrier it will have to compete with.

I think Sprint can make a comeback. Hopefully.

They’ve been constantly losing customers to larger carriers AT&T and Verizon. T-Mobile is also catching up to Sprint. The only thing Sprint has going for them right now is their huge network and free roaming. They have recently sold off all their towers so they could rent them (it makes since because they don’t have to pay to fix them when something goes wrong).

I still have Sprint because I was grandfathered in on the old SERO plan, it’s basically the most amazing cellular phone plan that ever was.

I have no loyalties though, if Sprint decided to drop me, I’ll switch.

Now in an attempt to turn things around, they are looking at everything they can do to help. First they sold around 3,000 towers to a company so they could lease them back and now they are looking for a buyer for their iDEN network.

I have Sprint. I have never had a problem with their service (or their prices). While almost everyone I know has ATT wireless, in our town there is no 3G coverage, while Sprint covers us with EVDO. In my opinion, Sprint is the better carrier to have.

The truth is, Sprint has some technologies they “want” to implement but “haven’t.” Take the Airave for example, it’s been in test markets for over a year. If you don’t know what it is, it is a femtocell base that plugs into an Ethernet port on your router and transmits Sprint’s signal, so you can get GREAT coverage in your house. It would be great for people like us, who are just outside their coverage area in our house. Even though roaming is free, there has been rumors going around they’re going to drop customers who roam more than 500 minutes a month.

Ok, that’s enough about that. It’s great you can read more about it at Sprint

So it’s no wonder that someone wants to take advantage of this company while they are down. After the first quarter and the write off of Nextel…Sprint’s been in a slump.

So what makes the 3G iPhone so different than the first? From what I hear it’s the faster internet. I don’t know how much different the internet speeds are. Since I’ve been on the internet with my cell phone, I’ve always had high speed wireless internet (Thanks Sprint Ev-Do). If you look at AT&T Wireless’s website, 3g really looks fast, because it has flames surrounding the icon.

Congratulations Apple….you really make a popular product. Is it the best phone in the U.S.? Probably not… Is it one of the best selling phones in the U.S.? Definitely. Did it make your shares rise 3.1% today? Well, quite possibly. However, I will take my Centro over this iPhone. My Centro has all the features in a phone I could want…Touchscreen WITH a keyboard. It’s really nice actually. It also plays music and has the internet (along with Palm’s (outdated but very reliable) OS.

In other phone news, Sprint released the Treo 800w on Friday. It, like my Centro, has a touchscreen and a full QWERTY keyboard. It also sports Wi-Fi and Windows Mobile 6.1. However, it does not come in electric blue or pink, so I will be sticking with my Centro.