Wait a minute, is this possible? Is Sprint finally dusting itself off and getting ready to fight after year’s of being the wireless industry’s whipping boy? Per GigaOM, Sprint this week reported that it added 967,000 net subscribers in the final calendar quarter of 2014, which was enough to help it remain the third-largest wireless carrier in the country despite the huge gains T-Mobile has made in the last year.
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Included among Sprint’s customer adds were 410,000 prepaid customers on its Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile subsidiaries and 30,000 branded postpaid subscribers. Although Sprint has typically had success adding prepaid and wholesale subscribers, it’s been shedding valuable postpaid subscribers at an alarming clip, so it’s good to see the carrier at least holding its ground in this area.
Sprint has gotten much more serious about competing with its rivals ever since new CEO Marcelo Claure. Not only did Claure wisely decide to kill of Sprint’s “Framily” plan campaign, but Sprint last year also unveiled a new $60 plan that gives you unlimited talk, text and data as well as competitive new family plans that effectively double the monthly data allotments of older family plans without raising prices a dime, although those new plans are only available to new customers who come from other carriers and not current Sprint subscribers.
All told, it looks like the wireless industry is much more competitive now that it was at this time last year, and that’s something we’re very happy to see.
