Sprint Still Deciding Whether To Take Part in Incentive Auction, CEO Says
Sprint still has made no decision whether it will participate in next year’s TV incentive auction, CEO Marcelo Claure said on a call Tuesday as the carrier released its 1Q results. Numbers released by Sprint confirm that the carrier has fallen behind T-Mobile and is now the nation’s fourth-largest wireless carrier, behind Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
“We’re building a great network based on our existing, rich, spectrum portfolio,” Claure said. The 600 MHz spectrum sold in the auction may not be available until as late as 2020, he said: “We have to work with the spectrum that we have today.” The incentive auction offers an “opportunity” to buy low-band spectrum, he said. “However, we want to make sure that before we make a decision we’ve got to understand the rules and we want to make sure that the rules are something that are going to make it worthwhile for Sprint to participate.”
Sprint announced a management shakeup Monday, with the hiring of Günther Ottendorfer as chief operating officer and Tarek Robbiati as chief financial officer (see 1508030073). Claure became CEO last August (see 1408070044).
Masayoshi Son, CEO of Sprint parent SoftBank, took part in the call and reiterated his commitment to Sprint. "I'm extremely excited about the turnaround of Sprint," he said. "I don't want to sell the company. I think Sprint is going to be a very good company, of which I will be very proud." Japan's SoftBank bought 70 percent of Sprint in October 2012 (see 1210160056).
Son said he lost confidence in the U.S. market at one point, but his thinking changed over the past few months. “I’ve been … very, very involved, especially on the network side,” he said, saying he works almost every night with his engineers to design Sprint’s next-generation network: “Now we have a plan to have a big turnaround.”
Son also said wireless networks in the U.S. lag behind those in Japan and elsewhere in terms of coverage, speed and integration. “Every time I come to the states I say this network in this country is not something you should be proud of,” he said. “It’s actually very, very bad.” Son said he's convinced Sprint can build a superior network with lower expenditures than have been made by other carriers.
Sprint added 675,000 subscribers in Q1, reducing losses of postpaid subscribers for the fifth consecutive quarter, with 12,000 postpaid customers lost in total, but net adds in May and June. With a subscriber base of 57.7 million, Sprint for the first time fell behind T-Mobile, which has 58.9 million net subscribers. Sprint had net revenue of $8 billion in Q1, down 9 percent from the same quarter last year. Sprint had a net loss of $20 million, vs. net profit of $23 million for the same quarter last year. Churn was a record low 1.56 percent, compared with 2.05 percent a year ago.
Sprint also said all 1,435 stores co-branded with RadioShack are now open and staffed with Sprint employees. “The fully operational ‘store-within-a-store’ retail model has been completed in about one quarter of the locations with the remaining expected to be complete by the end of calendar year 2015,” the carrier said.