Sprint has struggled this year to really cement their position in the U.S. market. While they had maintained their third position spot for some time, that had become increasingly under threat from T-Mobile who had been pulling out all the stops to ensure they grow their customer base, produce good churn rates and expand their 4G LTE coverage in the U.S. Moves which finally did see T-Mobile surpass Sprint based on subscriber numbers.
However, Sprint is not a company to just sit back and let T-Mobile continue to overtake them and as a result Sprint has been offering a number of promotions over recent months to both attract new customers and maintain their current customer base. In fact, Sprint only today announced the launch of a new promotion where each day, for the next five days, they will be giving away free gifts to say thank you (more specifically, Cheers to You) to their customers. However, that has not been the big Sprint promotion of this year. Instead, that title is probable reserved for the promotion Sprint launched back in November, the ‘cut your bill in half’ promotion. While those who follow the Sprint news will know the cut your bill in half promotion actually started last year, the more recent re-announcing of the promotion saw one significant difference from the original promotion – the inclusion of T-Mobile as a carrier you could switch from. Previously, the promotion was only open to customer from AT&T and Verizon, however, the introduction of T-mobile as a compatible company, meant that Sprint were promising to cut your bill in half from all three competing carriers.
A move which analysts are now starting to believe could be having an effect. In fact, analysts from Jefferies were today reported noting that as many as 50,000 customers may have made the switch from T-Mobile over to Sprint in the fourth quarter, thanks to the cut your bill in half promotion. The figure came from a revising from the Jefferies analysts for their estimate for postpaid handset net adds for T-Mobile. The same analysts also did note that a similar T-Mobile promotion which started days after the Sprint one, may have been an early indication that Sprint’s promotion had worked. Although, they also pointed out that it could just as easily have been a move made in haste by the Uncarrier. Either way, the analysts do suggest that the move by Sprint will be one which will have impacted T-Mobile’s fourth quarter results in some capacity.