Skip to footer

Sprint preps for $20 billion facelift

Sprint lost $1.3 billion and a lot of subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2012. But big changes are in store for the company. 

|
Reuters
People walk past a Sprint store in New York in this Dec. 17 file photo. Sprint Nextel, which is seeking to sell 70 percent of its shares to Japan's SoftBank, lost subscribers in Q4 of 2012.
  • By Matthew Shaer

Sprint Nextel, the third largest carrier in the US behind AT&T and Verizon, posted a loss of $1.3 billion in the fourth quarter of last year, the company announced today. In addition, Sprint Nextel continued to lose subscribers at a worrying rate: 243,000 contract customers jumped ship last quarter, according to the Wall Street Journal, more than the 229,000 predicted by some analysts. 

Kansas-based Sprint Nextel is very much a company in transition. In coming months, Sprint will likely merge with the the cash-rich Japanese company Softbank, in a deal that would give Sprint $20 billion in cash and Softbank a 70 percent stake in Sprint. (The US Justice Department is currently evaluating the proposed merger between Sprint and Softbank, Bloomberg recently reported.)

In addition, Sprint is jettisoning both the Nextel name and the Nextel platform, which used Integrated Digital Enhanced Network, or iDEN, technology. 

"The changes represent a massive identity shift for Sprint, and one that brings hope and optimism to the company and its leadership," Roger Cheng of CNET writes today. "Sprint, which has long struggled to juggle both networks while attempting to turn around several quarters of losses and customer defections, may finally be turning a corner with the big changes set to take effect in the coming months."

Still, Sprint faces a long uphill climb before it can catch its competitors: Verizon and AT&T both have well upward of 100 million subscribers, while Sprint has only about 56 million. 

For more tech news, follow us on Twitter: @CSMHorizonsBlog

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Sprint preps for $20 billion facelift
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2013/0207/Sprint-preps-for-20-billion-facelift
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe