Sprint has had an interesting few years to say the least. With increased competition from T-Mobile, SoftBank buying 70% stake in the company, Dan Hesse being removed as CEO and Marcelo Claure taking over, not to mention the company attempting to buy T-Mobile which the FCC kept telling them it won’t happen. Claure has been focusing more and more on their network. Which is where his focus should be. While their network is bigger than T-Mobile’s, it still isn’t all that great in some areas. This week, a new RootMetrics report came out stating that Sprint is now the fastest network – technically tied – in their hometown of Kansas City, Missouri. So he was interviewed by Kansas City, MO based TV station KSHB. He had this to say about unlimited data:
“There will be a time when it might not be economically viable to offer unlimited,” he said yesterday in an interview. “But for now, we’re OK. For the next few months unlimited continues. We might increase the prices toward the latter part of the year and then we might eliminate it in the future.”
So it looks like Sprint might be looking to get rid of unlimited data in the near future, and follow the trends of Verizon and AT&T who eliminated them years ago. However, getting rid of their biggest selling point is probably not the best idea. Sprint’s network is getting better though, according to RootMetrics first half of 2015’s report. In 111 of the 125 markets that were measured, RootMetrics awarded the company with 156 total first place awards. Those include either outright or tied for first. These awards included overall, reliability, speed, data, call, or text network performance. That is a huge increase over last year where it only brought home 21 awards in those same 111 markets for the first half of 2014. Quite the improvement, but there’s always work to be done.
It was in May, that Marcelo Claure famously stated that in two years his network would be the best in the country. He then clarified that he meant in the top 100 markets in the country. Either way, that’s a short time for a turnaround like that, building out and improving a network doesn’t happen overnight.