Even Sprint Beat AT&T and Verizon in Customer Growth (cnet.com) 78
Customers are turning to Sprint again. From a report on CNET: In fact, they're starting to look to the nation's fourth-largest wireless carrier over stalwarts like AT&T and Verizon Wireless. The company said it added 405,000 net new post-paid subscribers -- people who pay at the end of the month and tend to be more loyal. Of that total, 368,000 were phone customers, Sprint's highest rate of growth in four years. The numbers suggest Sprint is starting to pull itself out of a death spiral, reversing years of losses, customers faced with poor service and a network that lagged behind the competition. Sprint's customer growth came at a time when all the carriers were aggressive with holiday promotions. It's a trend that will likely continue, resulting in more potential deals for consumers. "Sprint is turning the corner," CEO Marcelo Claure said in the company's fiscal third-quarter report on Tuesday.
Cool story, bro. (Score:1)
But that doesn't really sound like news for nerds, or stuff that matters. It actually looks more like Sprint marketing.
Re: Cool story, bro. (Score:1)
Just wait until those poor bastards get their first bill and have to spend hours getting it straight, then the same thing keeps happening every month.
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That's me. With Verizon. Now.
Re: Cool story, bro. (Score:2)
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There were some winners and some losers for that. For about two years, I had the same discount applied twice by accident (came out to about 34% off). When some audit system finally caught it, I got a form letter apologizing profusely for the 2 years of billing errors "I had to endure". It's true, the extra cash in my wallet was little heavy to carry...
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That doesn't mean it is a great choice, only that some praised it. At that, when were those praises spoken? I can imagine a hosts file might have been useful when running on 1GB or less of ram, but now it makes no sense to do all that work, and endure all the speed loss for a couple of MB of ram savings.
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Wow, the same answered question yet again, so original APK. But I guess you don't have an answer for the question I asked? Does it make you look too bad?
Simple and straightforward reason for this. (Score:4, Funny)
Sprint offers sweetheart deals... for now (Score:1)
Then they will do like all the rest and kill those deals off as time goes by, and then those customers will flip back to AT&T/Verizon. Just another merry-go-round.
The two best MNVOs I've found (Score:2)
I don't know why people use sprint when the sprint MNVO's seem to be better in price and offer the same service.
There's two MNVO phone companies that use Sprint towers (and some t-mobile towers) that I suspect are growing fast. One is Republic Wireless and the other is Freedompop. If you don't use your phone a lot then freedom pop is totally free. Republic wireless just reshuffled their plans but up until recently unlimited calling and texting was $10 a month. That plan is now only available on some ha
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You're forgetting about Ting. If you don't use your phone that much, it's quite cheap. And customer service is excellent. I am, however, looking at switching to Republic Wireless because of the unlimited calls and texts, as my usage of these has gone way up lately due to a new girlfriend. But Ting is still a great option IMO and I recommend checking it out.
But your general point is great: why does anyone bother with the traditional carriers any more? There's many dozens of MVNOs out there, for all the
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Also, Project Fi.
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Project Fi sucks; it's a Google service, and it only uses Google's own Nexus and Pixel phones. I'm sorry, a phone service that only lets you use one of a grand total of 3 phones is not a very good option unless you're a giant Google fan. You really should point out this fact about them any time you recommend them, as it's a huge caveat.
Republic Wireless is similar, though not quite as bad. They have a very limited selection of phones they'll work with, generally very new and expensive ones. If I wanted
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The problem with Republic Wireless is that you're locked into using their phones or an extremely limited number of others; you can't just bring any device like you can with other MVNOs.
Saturated Market (Score:3)
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Indeed, but is that news for tech nerds? Finance nerds, perhaps.
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Saturated markets can still have movement of swaths of customers between competing providers. Indeed, but is that news for tech nerds? Finance nerds, perhaps.
Not just finance nerds, which I am not. But still of interest to me, if for no other reason than of the big 4 mobile providers, it is Sprint I like the most. In order of best to worst:
1 Sprint - about as good as a root canal
2 T-Mo - better than having your fingernails ripped off, but not much
3 Verizon - pretty much equal to having your testicals raked across molten salt and nibbled on by piranahs
4 At&T - Smells like shit, tastes like shit, treats everyone like shit, I am sort of surprised they wo
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They need to fix their network (Score:4, Insightful)
Only reason I stick with AT&T is their 4G LTE coverage and the civilized function of being able to use DATA whine in a call. Verizon and their archaic system that disallows data during a call needs to be thrown out.
Problem is Sprint uses the same technology as Verizon.
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Is there really a use case for having data while in a phone call? Do you really want to get an e-mail notification or listen/watch streaming content while talking to someone on the phone?
If it is a huge concern, just use a VoIP client (Facetime, Skype, etc).
Re:They need to fix their network (Score:5, Informative)
Load a document, discuss an email that was just sent, review an image for approval, look up nearby restaurants to decide where to eat lunch, put in an online order for carry out as your wife tells you what she wants over the phone...
They're all things that I've done in the recent past and I'm hardly a power business cell phone user. Sure they all could have been done by ending the call, performing whatever task, then calling back. But why not do it while they're on the line if you can?
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Talk with your travel partner, drag up reservations/whatever while talking.
Re:They need to fix their network (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there really a use case for having data while in a phone call?
I imagine the practical use cases are few, but I have seen a co-worker use Google Maps while on a call productively.
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Trying to decide where to meet for lunch while on the phone and you want to look at a map or check yelp.
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I often tether my laptop to my phone while traveling. While tethered, and using data on my laptop, I'd still like to be able to make and receive phone calls.
Re: They need to fix their network (Score:2)
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I google search stuff all the time if there is a question in a call... I add stuff to the grocery list while talking to my wife about it... I have my tablet connected to my wifi hotspot while I order Chinese food... I mean, constant and ubiquitous internet access is expected, why would it halt just because I am using the phone?
Re:They need to fix their network (Score:4, Informative)
I think your facts need updating. As a Verizon customer, I can use data during calls and have been able to do so for years. It's true that you can't use data during a voice call if you're on a 3G tower, but the only place I see those anymore is while at government offices [wikipedia.org].
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Or...you can also find 3G towers everywhere that is not a major metropolitan area. Like the country. Where...lots of people still live.
Re: They need to fix their network (Score:2)
Verizon's 4G coverage is about as good as it gets when it comes to cellular providers. Take a look at their current coverage maps for 4G. I was definitely using data and making phone calls as far back as 2010 on a smartphone.
I'm going to get laughed at, but after living abroad for a few years now i've come to miss Verizon. Mobile phone carriers in Europe absolutely suck. I can't get consistent service in the middle of my office building. Driving through the countryside makes streaming music a nightmare bec
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Problem is Sprint uses the same technology as Verizon.
On the other hand... I use Ting [ting.com] with a CDMA phone (Kyocera Hydro Vibe) and the underlying network is Sprint. However, they also have a roaming agreement with Verizon for out-of-Sprint coverage. Also noting that you can get GSM phones from Ting, which (I believe) uses the T-Mobile network.
I'm not a heavy phone/text/data user so Ting's block pricing works well for me. So far, the coverage seems to be pretty wide and reliable. My monthly bill seems to alternate between $13 and $17 (and change). My highe
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Oh my. That hasn't been true since phones got 4G LTE.
See, CDMA won the GSM vs CDMA war. GSM used TDMA - each phone took turns talking to the tower, so bandwidth is divided by the number of phones even if some (or most) of those phones don't have anything to transmit. CDMA allows each phone to transmit simultaneously. The tower tells them apart because each is assigned an orthogonal code. Each phone see other p
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Verizon's archaic VoLTE [verizonwireless.com] capability that lets you use DATA while in a call, that I used just last week, you mean?
That feature was introduced in late 2014. Sounds more like your knowledge is archaic.
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I've been thinking about this, and I think the significance of 1% in reliability depends on how reliable you're talking about in an absolute sense.
Compare a service that is 50% reliable to one that is 51% reliable; there's very little to choose between them; failures are a regular feature of both services. But a service that is 99% reliable is bound to feel a lot less reliable than one that is 99.9% reliable, because it fails ten times as often.
Now reality is probably more complicated; reliability probably
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It also depends on what you mean by "reliability". Do you mean dropped calls? I haven't experienced or heard of anyone else experiencing a significant problem with any of the major carriers dropping calls for years now. Being within 1% on that metric is totally unimpressive. Do you mean reliability of finding a cell signal on your phone? Because I was a Sprint customer until 2 years ago and dropped them for that very reason. So either my area is part of the 1% where their reliability isn't the same, o
Sprint is great... (Score:1)
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Actually Sprint is great if you do travel internationally. They have unlimited global data (though only 3G speeds outside US/Canada) and texting at no additional charge. There's also some sort of $5/month pro-ratable plan that upgrades you to unlimited full speed data/talk/text in some countries, if you ask for it they'll automatically add/take it off during your stay. It ended up being their saving grace for me because their in-store customer service is abysmal.
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I just told you they are NOT expensive on Sprint, since mid 2015 or so it is no additional charge. I've used it in four different countries in SE Asia and Oceania. Proof: Sprint Global Roaming [sprint.com]. If you're going to "correct" me please do some research first.
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Becoming bigger than Verizon or AT&T isn't har (Score:2)
All you have to do is not adopt the same bullshit-fee and fuck-you-charge "sales" model that Verizon and AT&T have been using in recent times to essentially demonstrate their corporate arrogance and ability to fuck over their customers in the name of pure unadulterated greed.
TL; DR - Don't become a greedy prick, because competition still exists.
I'm surprised... (Score:2)
I just recently (August - September) completed a way too in depth review of T-Mobile and Sprint for my personal use. I'm a long time AT&T customer, and a happy one, but I was switching to a BYOD phone and thought I might find equal service for a lower price elsewhere. Of the three (ATT, TMOB and Sprint) Sprint's coverage didn't appear to come close, international plans were definitely not as good, and the pricing was no better. TMOB was very close to ATT, and I especially liked VoLTE and WiFi calling on