While Sprint was recently overtaken by T-Mobile as America’s third largest wireless carrier, the company’s CEO, Mr. Marcelo Claure, remains positive and upbeat about its business going forward. Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference on Thursday, Mr. Claure revealed that the carrier has been able to reduce its churn rates to its all-time lowest levels of 1.56 percent in the second quarter of this year. The company had already managed to lower its churn rates to 1.84 percent in Q1, from the 2014 levels of 2.05 percent. Helped in no small measure by its ability to retain existing high-value postpaid subscribers, the carrier has reportedly been able to add postpaid subscribers for four successive months, according to the company CEO. This is the first time in almost three and a half years (forty months to be precise) that Sprint has been able to progressively add to its subscriber tally for four months in a row.
Mr. Claure attributed the positive numbers mostly to the carrier’s ever improving network quality, asserting the Sprint is on course to be ranked either the best or the second-best carrier in terms of network performance in as much as 80 percent of all major markets across the country by the end of 2017. “I think from a network perspective we’re getting better dramatically”, is how he put it. The Sprint CEO also believes that the pricing of its plans and the recently-introduced handset leasing program have also contributed handsomely to the carrier’s resurgence in the past quarter. He contended that Sprint is the value-leader when compared to its rivals, although he admitted that the company might have to do more to put the message across to consumers better. Mr. Claure also looked to clear the air about the future availability of the two-year contract plans, saying that the company is seriously considering doing away with them altogether, in favor of the lease-only model.
Speaking on the carrier’s network densification plans, Mr. Claure said that Sprint will upgrade it’s entire network to support LTE on the 800, 1900 and 2500 MHz spectrum across all markets it operates in. The CEO however, refused to reveal whether Sprint will bid for spectrum at next year’s 600 MHz incentive auctions, saying that the official announcement regarding the same, will be made within the next few weeks. It’s worth mentioning that the company already owns 120 MHz of 2.5 GHz spectrum in 90 out of the top 100 markets, which will allow it to become one of the top two networks in the country, according to Mr. Claure.