Sprint Spins a Positive 4Q & Full Year Story, But Subscriber Losses Continue
Some of you may remember the late great Rodney Dangerfield whose tag line was: “I don’t get no respect.” In the telecom world, Sprint is its Rodney Dangerfield. Sprint’s 4th quarter and full year 2009 report tried to create an understandable positive spin…
Sprint Nextel Reports Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2009 Results
– Post-paid subscriber growth
– $666 Free Cash Flow (let’s not even go there about that triple digit number)
– Continual improvement in customer care satisfaction metrics
– $1.1 billion investment in the Clearwire (Clear) 4G wireless data company
– Acquisition of Virgin Mobile USA and iPCS, Inc.
Nevertheless, ZDNet writers read the results and wrote…
Sprint earnings: More progress in fourth quarter, but still dropping subscribers
Wait, you might ask, didn’t Sprint say they had subscriber growth. Yes, but you have to read company reports carefully. Note the phrase “Post-paid”. If you read further, you’ll see that they lost a total of 69,000 net retail subscribers in the quarter
Let’s hope Sprint can turn around their subscriber bleed rate. Verizon needs healthy CDMA phone competition from Sprint.
