Sprintâs Customer Erosion Prompts Cutbacks
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Shares of Sprint dropped 25 percent after the company said that it planned to lay off 4,000 workers and close stores to trim costs as its customer base shrinks.
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Sprint Corp. on Tuesday reported a wider loss for the third quarter as it wrote off &#36;3.5 billion in value for its long-distance assets.
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AT&T Inc. customers in the Midwest and Southeast with Web-enabled smart phones lost some service Thursday.
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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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KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Sprint Nextel Corp. isn't apologizing for its decision to ax customers it determined were calling customer service too often.
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Wireless phone company Sprint Nextel Corp. said Friday it plans to slash 4,000 jobs and close 125 retail locations to gird itself for an expected slowdown in subscriber growth and revenue.
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Sprint Nextel  reported deeper-than-expected subscriber losses on Friday and said it would cut about 4,000 jobs, sending its shares down 19 percent to their lowest level in more than five years.
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OVERLAND PARK, Kan. Sprint plans to cut 700 jobs in its business solutions division. It will also take a charge against earnings in its third quarter to reflect a decline in value of its long-distance assets.
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Sprint Nextel reported deeper-than-expected subscriber losses and said it would cut about 4,000 jobs, sending its shares down 19 percent to their lowest level in more than five years.
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Sprint (nyse: FON - news - people ) President and Chief Operating Officer Len Lauer also had overseen the telecom&#39;s consumer division.
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Sprint Nextel Corp  said on Thursday that it might have to write off all of the $30.7 billion goodwill value from its purchase of Nextel Communications and smaller deals as it struggles with customer losses.
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The phone company reported a fourth-quarter loss of $11.1 million as it scaled back on marketing and cut other costs.
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More than a thousand people who phoned in for assistance too often -- at least in the company's eyes -- find themselves suddenly cut off from wireless service.
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Sprint Nextel , the No. 3 U.S. mobile service, said on Friday it would cut about 4,000 jobs within the company, close 125 stores and reduce its use of outsourced services to improve its financial performance.
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The proposed $35 billion merger of Sprint Corp. and Nextel Communications Inc. would have little immediate effect on current customers of either company.
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By DAVID TWIDDY    KANSAS CITY, Mo.  -- Sprint Corp...
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Sprint Nextel's interim chief executive acknowledged yesterday that the company had lost focus, and he vowed to rally its beleaguered workforce.