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Sprint has turned a modest profit this quarter, and when we say modest boy do we mean it. Sprint’s Q2 2014 numbers show that the company was able to rake in $23 million in net profit this quarter on the back of income of $519 million. That’s Sprint’s best revenue in more than seven full years, and their best net profit in almost 7 years (when excluding non-cash transactions).
Whether that’s more of a testament to how bad they’ve done over the years or how well they’re doing lately is another story. Regardless, it’s important that Sprint finds itself turning even the tiniest of profits as that’s what separates a good business from a bad one.
Sprint attributes their performance to the near-complete work done on upgrading their 3G and 4G network. That work included strengthening the former by decongesting the network thanks to getting more people onto the latter, as well as more reliable and stable signals on Sprint’s tri-band Spark spectrum upgrades. Sprint’s 4G LTE now 254 million people, and Sprint expects to reach close to the entirety of their current 3G network by the end of the year.
There will be some key things to watch as we head into the second half of this year. Reports that Sprint is ready to gobble up T-Mobile are running more rampant than ever, and that’s certainly something that could change the identity of the US wireless scene in a big way. Should that not come to pass, Sprint will have to work that much harder to compete as T-Mobile will no doubt continue to shake up the wireless industry with groundbreaking moves and force the other big three carriers to keep up in a race to the finish.
Near complete work?….Wow Sprint is really feeding lies, real hard. Their 4G network still needs major improvement in my area. they need to start pointing more antennas across my city with more band 41 coverage..Still fluctuates horribly, with ping in my house at 321ms or higher on band 25 or 26(forgot which one) at less then 1.4Mb/s. Caught band 41 at 1 bar and it was 700Kb/s or less, in my house.
What city do you live in?
Union city, NJ
Looks like it’s still spotty in your area.
http://sensorly.com/map/4G/US/USA/Sprint/lte_310sprint#q=Union+City%2C+NJ%2C+USA|coverage
That would be why you see lower than normal speeds and yes, some of that could be fixed with new towers. You just have to ask why they haven’t put any up? Is the city preventing it? NIMBYs? Tree huggers? And you say you get low speeds in your house, how does it fair outside? Sprint’s everyday 4G LTE band isn’t the best for building penetration. While I never seen speeds that low at my home or work or anywhere, I did still see a drop between inside and outside. In that instance, that’s not Sprint’s fault as it occurs with every carrier who doesn’t fully utilize a band that is good for building penetration.
yea thats a given, about the speed drops between home and outside. Speed jumps up above 5Mb/s per second but not all the time. Considering this area was heavy with Nextel users, and them decommissioning to give faster 4G indoors, ive asked why myself.
According to that website, my house has no 4g coverage. This is why I left sprint after over 10 years of service. Used to have service all the time, slowly degraded coverage, then couldn’t even make calls from the house. Get a hold of sprint online and they say it’s because they towers in my are are down and being worked on and would be done by the following day. 1 month later, still no service. Service will return “shortly”. To those that do have good luck with sprint, congrats. I was not one of those people and am still bitter on how they did everything in their power to lose me as a customer.
I just left Sprint after 10 years. Not because of the network, since that improved big time over the last 3 years, but because they didn’t want to give me my upgrade the way I wanted it. I didn’t want to do easy pay and couldn’t afford the $650 off contract price. I wanted the $99 two year upgrade price that was on Amazon’s website for the phone. They didn’t seem to care so I ported my number to Verizon.
Network wise, Verizon’s isn’t any faster than Sprint’s.
But, regarding your issue, Sprint seems to not care as much and actually expects people like you to leave. This line here in the article at the link above shows it: “Sprint platform postpaid net losses of 181,000 during the quarter were largely due to expected elevated churn levels related to service disruption associated with the company’s ongoing network overhaul.”
Hold on they didnt allow you to do the 2 yr upgrade price…were u on their old everything data plans? cuz i was able to thru amazon and got my M8 H/K edition….
No, I had changed to the Framily plan to get a lower bill. Since I never used more than 500mb of data per month, I seen no need to keep the everything data plan. I’m on WiFi everywhere I go. So, I wanted to save $35/mo on my plan. But, when time came to upgrade, they wouldn’t let me use the 2yr price. When I told them I was leaving, they didn’t seem to care. After asking them three times to cancel the line, I finally got it in their head by porting my number.
It was a lose/lose situation, too. Had I upgraded on the 2yr price before changing to a Framily plan, they would have charged me an extra fee. Otherwise it would have also been either the easy pay crap, which defeats the purpose of lowering my bill to begin with, or it was the full price option which I couldn’t afford.
Yeah, when the framily plan first launched they failed to tell us about the”no contact” terms. It is cheaper on a monthly basis until you upgrade your phone then it quickly gets expensive. The way I do it, upgrade in the fall then pay it off come income tax.
How many ppl did you have on the framily plan?….if it was 4 or lower it was better if you had stayed on the everything data plans….We all always knew that ATT verizon and sprint were double dipping and never discounting plans after your 2 years were up. but these guys got smart and said lets jump on the 1 upgrade a year gig that tmo did, lets raise or lower our prices, but place in data caps and rake in loads more then we ever did with original plans. Its more economical from a 2yr upgrade standpoint to stay with your everything data plans on sprint, right now its between 2 ppl on my account…one pays 84 and i pay 84 with a 20% discount and if we want to upgrade we keep paying the same after the first month and half charge they do after upgrading. At this point its Critical that anyone on family everything data plans, or solo everything data plans do their upgrades real soon, before they pull off the same crap like verizon and att and tell them no more upgrades on your old plans.
Verizon is about to start making a push to get rid of the unlimited data plans by now forcing a throttle once you pass 2 or 4GB starting October. They are going to limit you by the tower you are constantly connected to, to limit the load. I think its wrong for them to do that, I think their network can handle the “supposed 5%’ers” of data usage.
I only had one person on my Framily. The plan was $55/mo + taxes & fees for unlimited talk/text and 1GB data monthly. I had no problem with that as opposed to the Everything Data 450 at $79.99/mo + taxes & fees which came up to $88-90/mo every month.
On Verizon, I got a plan that was unlimited talk/text and 1GB data (same as base Sprint Framily plan for 1 person) for $60/mo and I was able to get the phone I wanted at $149.99 after rebate instead of financing it or paying full retail price.
But, as it goes with Sprint, if I had done my upgrade before switching to the Framily plan, they still would have tacked on another $15/mo fee for absolutely no reason whatsoever. It’s ridiculous. Their customer service chat person told me anyone who upgraded their phone after 01/01/2014 and then changed to a Framily plan would have been charged that $15/mo fee on top of their bill.
Needless to say, I had no problem porting my number to Verizon to pay $5/mo more than I was paying Sprint but to still get the phone I wanted without financing it or paying full price for it.
I never heard of anything like that before, I been with Sprint since 2002 and I had the 1500 minutes family plan. I just switched it to the new Sprint family plan and stillI am untitled for my upgrade, I never lost any of my upgrade with them. You must had some other issues with them.
I didn’t lose my upgrade with them and I had no issues with them prior to my plan change or my attempts to upgrade my phone.
If you sign up for the Framily plan, and don’t elect the route of yearly upgrades, then you can only upgrade one of two ways: Easy Pay or full price up front. They will not allow you to upgrade any other way.
Feeding lies? How? Maybe it is near complete and your area is one of the areas that still needs work. Someone has to be first and someone has to be last.
Their forums, other forums, speed tests, wimax, no wimax rollouts in others, $10 premium data fee(useless), now spark, now 8T8R(if i spelled it right)….all of that speaks volumes for me, they cant make up their minds. its like their network teams are having “AaaHAH! moments” to try and fix the network every 6-8months with new network lingo to throw at us…..I’ve just payed attention to them being a customer of theirs
Your experience in your area doesn’t mean that what they said isn’t true. In my recent experiences dealing with sprint’s network I can say the total opposite of you.
They don’t want to do the work because it’ll eat into their 23 million bucks lol
When they flipped the switch in my area, I was getting 20mps downloads. Now however, almost a year later their 4g has taken a crap. I get 100kbs, every bit as bad as their 3g was here.
The exact same thing happened to me, started out great and now I get 3G speeds even with 3 bars and 4G signal showing.
And yet you stay with the? Hmm…
Did they just add a bunch of customers? Last time I checked, they were bleeding customers left and right and now they are turning a profit. Unless they did a lot of restructuring, I don’t see how this is possible.
They still lost customers, but only 220K down from 383K the previous quarter. There are plenty of ways they can turn a profit without a lot of restructuring.
How would you turn a profit without restructuring? The only things I can think of are increasing your income while decreasing the outflow. I know they did close many stores so I am sure this helped. I also just read that despite still losing their normal customers, they did add more post paid customers and bulk/commercial accounts.
It’s simple to turn a profit without restructuring. You can stop spending as much money as you had been in the past and the ink can go from red to black just like that.
thanks for the info TrollBot
As someone who just switched to Sprint, I am not surprised. Their network is considerably better than T-Mobile’s where I live (Pittsburgh) and they also offer unlimited data.
Also paying about half as much than being on Verizon, which is nice as well.
“Sprint’s 4G LTE now 254 million people…”
Sprint’s LTE turned into 254 million people? Should I be worshipping this new god called Sprint?
Phandroid’s proofreading has been getting worse and worse. Every other article has mistakes like this (particularly Quentyn’s articles). I mean no offense, but you guys need to try a little harder to be professional.