New marketing for Sprint Nextel
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Sprint Nextel, which has struggled to attract customers with marketing criticized as confusing and unfocused, will try again when it rolls out new advertising this weekend.
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New Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse has lots of choices as he&#160;takes over the ailing mobile carrier&#160;and looks for problems to start solving.Sprint, the third-biggest wireless operator in the U.S., is&#160;losing subscribers as it keeps working through the merger of Sprint and Nextel, which occurred in 2005. On Tuesday,&#160;Sprint announced Hesse is taking over immediately for Gary Forsee, who was forced out by the company&#39;s board in October. Hesse, 54, previously led Embarq, the local wireless carrier Sprint spun off as part of the Nextel deal.Sprint needs to both distinguish itself from competitors and get its own house in order, according to mobile industry analysts.&quot;They couldn&#39;t go on without someone who&#39;s willing to set a direction,&quot; said Avi Greengart of Current Analysis. Sprint could try to compete with Verizon Wireless and AT&amp;T Wireless on price, or with more flexible terms of service, or bring out more innovative devices, but it&#39;s failed so far to choose, according to Greengart.&quot;Their brand right now doesn&#39;t stand for anything,&quot; he said.One thing the Sprint name has been associated with recently is disappointing customer service. Reporting on the quarter ended Sept. 30, the company blamed accelerating customer &quot;churn&quot; to other carriers in part on longer help calls and waits for those calls. The introduction of simplified bills, expected to continue until the middle of 2008, boosted the number of those calls, the company said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Sprint also noted new handsets at rival carriers, clearly a reference to AT&amp;T&#39;s Apple iPhone.Meanwhile, thanks to about 700,000 subscribers quitting the aging Nextel network, Sprint&#39;s subscriber base as a whole declined by a net 337,000 in the quarter. The carrier said it had about 54 million subscribers on Sept. 30.What could most set Sprint apart is also its biggest gamble, the WiMax wireless broadband network it plans to build across the U.S. at an estimated cost of US$5 billion. Though the WiMax network is likely to be in place first, set to reach 100 million people by the end of 2008, Sprint&#39;s main rivals plan to have their own high-speed data offerings using a similar technology, LTE (Long-Term Evolution). And WiMax won&#39;t fix Sprint&#39;s long-overdue need to harmonize its cellular operations, currently split between CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) and Nextel&#39;s older iDEN technology, Greengart said.If it goes ahead with WiMax -- interim CEO Paul Saleh said this month the business might be spun off -- Sprint will have to convince skeptical investors it&#39;s making the right move, said Yankee Group&#39;s Phil Marshall. It will also need to find a way for WiMax to truly complement the cellular business, Marshall said. So far, Sprint has painted WiMax as a mobile service distinguished from its conventional voice offerings by the promise of an any-application, any-device model. A better plan would be to push WiMax as an alternative to wired broadband that&#39;s bundled with Sprint&#39;s cellular service, Marshall said.However, in the short term, Hesse just needs to get the company to run its existing businesses better, Marshall said. Cleaning up customer service would be one key move, he added. Judging from Hesse&#39;s previous performance -- he once headed AT&amp;T Wireless -- the new CEO is qualified to do this, according to Marshall.&quot;He&#39;s very pragmatic and systematic in his management style,&quot; Marshall said.&#160;
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Sprint (NYSE: FON) is taking its mobile-data services to the next level, targeting both consumers and business customers, as the carrier rolls out the Sprint TV multimedia service and adds the popular  BlackBerry e-mail application to its portfolio.
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Sprint Nextel Corp , said on  Wednesday it would kick off a new advertising campaign as the  third biggest U.S. wireless service looks to improve the weak  growth of recent quarters.
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(InfoWorld) - Starting on Tuesday, when Sprint Nextel customers use the search bar in their phone browsers the results will automatically incorporate the users' location. Some customers will also be able to use voice commands to conduct searches. The capabilities are an extension of aÂ relationship that Microsoft and Sprint formedÂ late last year that initially involved including Microsoft's Live Search in the browser on Sprint phones. Microsoft is now adding automatic location detection to search results so users won't have to input their zip codes in their phones before getting local search results. Search results will include results from the Web, the phone and local information such as maps. Most recent Sprint phones include location-finding capabilities. In addition, users of five of Sprint's high-end phones will be able to download a client that will let them use voice commands to conduct searches. Once they have the application, users press the talk button on the phone to speak a search term. If the search is for a local business, for example, the results will include directions, the ability to press a button to call the business and the option to send directions to the place to a friend via text message. Sprint users of the Samsung a900, Samsung a920, Motorola Razr, Sanyo 840 and LG 550 phones will be able to download the voice search client. The application is based on technology from Tellme, the speech recognition company that Microsoft bought earlier this year. The services are not exclusive so they could become available via other operators in the future, said Phil Holden, director of mobile services at Microsoft. While other similar services are available to mobile users, this location-based search offering is more apt to be used because it comes built into the phones, Holden said. Earlier this year Ask.com came out with an applications that phone users could download and use to combine search with location information. In August, Nuance Communications began offering a service for BlackBerry users that lets users search and get driving directions using voice commands. Microsoft rivalÂ Google offers a mobile serviceÂ that automatically combines maps searches with a user's location. It's available for download on certain phones with location capabilities. Microsoft earns revenue from such offerings in two ways, Holden said. Microsoft shares in the revenue stream from the data services offered by operators and also from advertising, he said. The software giant hopes that it will be able to deliver more targeted advertising along with services like these that offer local search results.
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Sprint Nextel yesterday announced a series of partnerships aimed at deploying a high-speed wireless network called WiMax, as it offered glimpses of the new technology at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
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Sprint Nextel will pour more money into the iDEN network it inherited from Nextel, coming out with new handsets and adding features to its popular push-to-talk system.The&#160;struggling mobile operator, whose subscriber base is third-largest in the United States but declining, has been operating two networks since the merger of Sprint and Nextel Communications in 2005. The new company then said it would cap off investment in iDEN after the end of 2007. But even though Sprint is losing subscribers faster on iDEN than on its CDMA network and average revenue per iDEN user is falling, the company last year said it would keep investing in the network until at least 2012.On Tuesday, Sprint reiterated its commitment to iDEN, saying customers would see continued investment and new features. The announcement, in a news release, came about a week after the latest management shakeup at Sprint. The company&#39;s chief financial officer, chief marketing officer, and sales chief&#160;resigned last Thursday.iDEN weighs down an already ailing carrier that is simultaneously gearing up to start a third network using new WiMax wireless broadband technology, according to IDC analyst Godfrey Chua. While rivals Verizon and AT&amp;T prepare for a February shutdown of their aging analog networks, and in AT&amp;T&#39;s case an older digital technology called TDMA, Sprint holds on to iDEN because it needs the subscribers, he said. Those include many loyal businesses that rely on the network&#39;s Direct Connect push-to-talk technology, Chua said.&quot;It just hasn&#39;t been as easy for Sprint to consolidate its network architecture as it has been for AT&amp;T,&quot; Chua said.Sprint had 18.7 million customers on iDEN versus about 34.1 million on CDMA at the end of the third quarter of 2007, the latest period for which Sprint has announced financial results. About 1.2 million customers use PowerSource phones, which include iDEN and CDMA technology. Between postpaid Nextel service and prepaid Boost Mobile, a separate youth-oriented offering, Sprint suffered a net loss of about 757,000 iDEN users in the quarter, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.Direct Connect isn&#39;t standing still. The more immediate change, coming early this year, will be the introduction of a long-awaited push-to-talk system for Sprint&#39;s CDMA customers. It will work on a set of new CDMA handsets, and people will be able to use it between those new phones and all existing iDEN devices, she said.Building on the combination of Direct Connect and Sprint Mobile Broadband services, Sprint is planning new features such as &quot;push-to-x,&quot; which will let people send text messages, images, and other data through a simpler process than current messaging systems, said spokeswoman Stephanie Greenwood.Even as Sprint&#39;s CDMA-based push-to-talk has faced delays, rivals edged in on the feature, which Nextel pioneered. AT&amp;T Wireless has had push-to-talk for about two years, according to spokesman Mark Siegel. Verizon Wireless announced the launch of a push-to-talk service in 2003, though a search of its Web site indicated the carrier only sells one or two handsets for it.While restating its commitment to iDEN on Wednesday, Sprint highlighted two handsets recently introduced for the network. The Motorola i570, introduced this month, is designed for tough environments and offers voice-activated dialing and one-touch shortcuts to phone features. The Motorola i335, introduced last November, is built to military specifications for dust, shock, and vibration.
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Dec. 15--NEW YORK -- Sprint Corp. announced Wednesday that it has agreed to acquire smaller mobile phone rival Nextel Communications Inc.
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Today Sprint and Nextel Communications announced that their respective boards of directors have approved a merger agreement. The new entity, to be named Sprint Nextel, plans to spin off the existing Sprint land line business after the merger is completed.
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Sports media company teams with Sprint to offer a branded cell phone service.
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Sprint, the fourth-largest US cell phone operator, has started a $3 billion network upgrade, with $1 billion earmarked for a wireless broadband service to launch soon in selected cities, a Sprint executive said Tuesday.
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Sprint and Nextel Communications have signed a merger agreement. The combined company, which will adopt the name Sprint Nextel, will serve nearly 40 million wireless customers.
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Sprint is wiping Nextel from its slogan. After their merger, Sprint Nextel embarked on what analysts said was a disastrous marketing campaign. And problems with Nextel's network prompted an exodus of customers.
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Sprint Corp.'s agreement to buy Nextel Communications Inc. , in a $35 billion deal unveiled yesterday, will shake up the mobile phone market and create the third largest US wireless service provider.
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Sprint Corp.&#39;s agreement to buy Nextel Communications Inc., in a $35 billion deal unveiled yesterday, will shake up the mobile phone market and create the third largest US wireless service provider.
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As expected, Sprint Corp. and Nextel Communications announced their &quot;merger of equals&quot; Wednesday--with Sprint as the slightly dominant partner--and revealed some unexpected details of the combine: Nextel&#39;s
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For Sprint and Nextel cellular phone customers, a basic cellular e-mail client software package is now being added to the regular tier of service at no additional charge, for select phones capable of sending text.