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Comments on news posted 2013-09-27 08:20:05: It wasn't that long ago that it looked like Sprint CEO Dan Hesse could be forced out the door, the Sprint board blocking his attempt to acquire MetroPCS while keeping him on a short leash. ..

Sahrin
join:2004-05-15
Houston, TX

Sahrin

Member

According to their SEC filings

Hesse made $11M last year, not $1.2M.

By citing the figures the company hands out, you perpetuate the lie that they want people to believe, namely, that executive compensation isn't ludicrous.

»insiders.morningstar.com ··· tion?t=S

IPPlanMan
Holy Cable Modem Batman
join:2000-09-20
Washington, DC

IPPlanMan

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Hesse saved Sprint...

Hesse saved Sprint. The company was dying. Sprint didn't have the iPhone. He got it. It didn't have a cohesive network upgrade strategy. He developed it.

Sprint's network does suck right now, especially in DC where it doesn't have LTE launched. That will change in time, but if it's taking this long, it shows how crappy its network was: No enhanced/fiber backhaul, etc.

I'll say this, Sprint is really doing whatever it can to get new subscribers: Unlimited Data guarantee, etc. I wish its network could backup these promotions.
TBBroadband
join:2012-10-26
Fremont, OH

TBBroadband

Member

Dan also allowed a lot of the issues to happen. Sprint has had fiber all along- they partner with the MSOs, but when you sue your partner, you lose that footing.

Dan allowed Nextel to keep operating well past it should, he also was the one that had no real LTE upgrade plan- except to keep going with CLEAR until they started to burn cash and couldn't really upgrade. Only then did he decide they should build their own network, and not become an MVNO of the network Sprint STARTED to build in the first place.

And the Unlimited Data guarantee is only on phones, not anything else and you must "upgrade" to that. Why do you need to put it in a plan if things aren't changing on that?

Softbank should have given him the axe or put him on a very short leash with his "management" especially deciding to lay off more employees with their still Swiss cheese network in major cities.

skeechan
Ai Otsukaholic
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join:2012-01-26
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Sprint's network no longer sucks where I live. Their LTE is faster than either Verizon or AT&T in my part of Orange County, CA and with TD (thanks to Clearwire spectrum) along with Softbank's thick wallet has a significant advantage going forward.
TBBroadband
join:2012-10-26
Fremont, OH

TBBroadband

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That $$$ depends on how much they're willing to invest over time. Sprint is going to need MAJOR amounts of cash to keep itself afloat let alone not counting to build the new LTE network. Sprint should have upgraded YEARS ago when they had the customers and the $$$ instead of sitting back trying money without really doing anything. Sprint's LTE network maybe also be faster due to not many LTE users with a network that isn't even 20% built yet. Sprint really needs to get its act together as a whole or Softbank could end up selling them.
xenophon
join:2007-09-17

xenophon

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$16B over next two years to be invested in network. But coverage won't really improve until they start turning on 800Mhz LTE later this year and have more triband devices that do 800/1900/2500 LTE. 800 voice is turning on now but LTE not until later this year through next year. Within 2 years, Softbank plans to expand rural coverage and match VZW - which will rely on 800Mhz.
DarnellP
join:2004-10-12
Las Vegas, NV

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said by TBBroadband:

That $$$ depends on how much they're willing to invest over time. Sprint is going to need MAJOR amounts of cash to keep itself afloat let alone not counting to build the new LTE network. Sprint should have upgraded YEARS ago when they had the customers and the $$$ instead of sitting back trying money without really doing anything. Sprint's LTE network maybe also be faster due to not many LTE users with a network that isn't even 20% built yet. Sprint really needs to get its act together as a whole or Softbank could end up selling them.

Dude, just give it up with the false made up statistics, ridiculous prognostications and inaccurate talking points.

delusion ftl
@comcast.net

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I'm not convinced the iphone did a net good for sprint. Since they have brought it on, they still continue to lose subscribers, often in massive numbers, which was the primary thing the iphone was "supposed" to save. On top of it Apple's contract for Sprint is entirely unattainable. It's likely that Sprint will owe apple billions in contract breach when their initial promises come due. They are doing at best half of what Apple contracted them to do with the iphone.

So they continued to lose massive amounts of customers, AND, they will pay a massive penalty for carrying it. While we don't exactly know what would have happened had they not carried it, or had they waited for Apple to soften the terms, it seems like they ended up with a raw deal.
biochemistry
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join:2003-05-09
92361

biochemistry to DarnellP

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This is an internet message board. Without those types of comments, it would be forced to shut down.
mike656
join:2002-04-21
Orlando, FL

mike656

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Hesse was a joke with AT&T, Sprint is more of the same

Hesse has constantly dragged his feet over his tenure, he had no real plan for dealing with the Nextel debacle (until the last minute), no plan at addressing long term network congestion (until the last minute), it seems like a recurring theme. By the end of 2008, which was his first full year as CEO, 800 SMR and PCS should have been codified in the 3GPP for LTE, the iDen network had a firm shutdown date within 2009 with SMR 1x hardware being deployed before then, along with LTE later throughout 2009-2010. Such a move would have enabled 800 1x to be deployed over the whole network and a top 20-30 market launch of fairly dense LTE coverage by the end of 2010, right when Verizon launched its own LTE network. Today none of these problems would exist if he implemented such a plan, heck I think it would have been great if the coverage was kept away from the major highways between cities even to this day, to eliminate the issues Verizon is dealing with now before they would have even started. This would have been contingent on post launch site density and maximum deployment of available PCS spectrum for LTE, as a backup for 800 LTE, to be in full swing in those areas. In a nutshell, the 1x deployment would have kept the Nextel users around, and the LTE deployment would have prevented the network from crashing in virtually every urban Sprint market in this country, and company would have 20 million additional paying customers, a conservative estimate of those who fled to AT&T and Verizon who were on the iDen network.
xenophon
join:2007-09-17

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Re: Hesse saved Sprint...

said by [delusion ftl :

]On top of it Apple's contract for Sprint is entirely unattainable.

Sounds like you are spinning false FUD. Sprint has been able to sell enough iPhones as contracted, it's Verizon that is having troubles meeting quota. Sprint's commitment was much smaller than Verizon's.

»myandroidchief.com/veriz ··· iphones/

Another report says Sprint can't keep enough new iPhones in stock.

»www.cnbc.com/id/101059972

Most of Sprint's customer losses have been on the Nextel side and they are gone now. The Network Vision rollout will be rough and some will still leave but analysts are expecting once they turn on 800Mhz, coverage will significantly improve and growth should pick back up. Softbank big bucks increases the chances of them moving forward now.
DarnellP
join:2004-10-12
Las Vegas, NV

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said by biochemistry:

This is an internet message board. Without those types of comments, it would be forced to shut down.

Lol, very true!

SteelerRaw
@8.28.150.x

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Re: Hesse was a joke with AT&T, Sprint is more of the same

said by mike656:

By the end of 2008, which was his first full year as CEO, 800 SMR and PCS should have been codified in the 3GPP for LTE

Getting the 3GPP to issue band class 25 for PCS & G and band class 26 for the SMR spectrum weren't even particularly large issues anyway. For one, the multi mode base stations weren't ready for prime time at that juncture. The OEMs and baseband manufacturers were lagging behind as well.
quote:
the iDen network had a firm shutdown date within 2009 with SMR 1x hardware being deployed before then, along with LTE later throughout 2009-2010. Such a move would have enabled 800 1x to be deployed over the whole network and a top 20-30 market launch of fairly dense LTE coverage by the end of 2010, right when Verizon launched its own LTE network. Today none of these problems would exist if he implemented such a plan, heck I think it would have been great if the coverage was kept away from the major highways between cities even to this day, to eliminate the issues Verizon is dealing with now before they would have even started. This would have been contingent on post launch site density and maximum deployment of available PCS spectrum for LTE, as a backup for 800 LTE, to be in full swing in those areas. In a nutshell, the 1x deployment would have kept the Nextel users around, and the LTE deployment would have prevented the network from crashing in virtually every urban Sprint market in this country, and company would have 20 million additional paying customers, a conservative estimate of those who fled to AT&T and Verizon who were on the iDen network.

Mike, your post seems to ignore rather large and onerous problem of rebanding for public safety. Moreover, the FCC didn't issue a ruling permitting wideband operations in the SMR spectrum until late May 2012: »www.fcc.gov/document/800 ··· nd-order

Could things have been sped up? Probably, but likely only by months, not years as you seem to be implying.
mike656
join:2002-04-21
Orlando, FL

mike656

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I realize that SMR rebanding was incomplete along with the issue of these new fancy multi band antennas with RRH's, but Sprint did little to nothing to push along the process with the FCC when it could have, instead focusing on junk WiMax and marketing. If they made a big enough fuss about it (pay the right people off), I have no doubt that they would have been able to start running at least a 1.25 MHz CDMA channel by the beginning of 2010. The antenna issue seems to be not such a big deal to me, deploying traditional SMR antennas on existing Sprint sites without RRH's, which could have also been used for LTE, in the first wave. Later when the 1900 A-F and/or 1900 G would have been overlaid, upgrade those areas to a standard like today's Network Vision project, and use the older gear for the areas omitted in the first wave, along with perhaps geographical expansion. At the very minimum, having backhaul up to snuff rather than having T1's almost everywhere would have helped tremendously prior to NV.

Guest
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Sprint

He may be staying til 2018 but I left last month. Terriblecomp any

SteelerRaw
@8.28.150.x

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Re: Hesse was a joke with AT&T, Sprint is more of the same

said by mike656:

At the very minimum, having backhaul up to snuff rather than having T1's almost everywhere would have helped tremendously prior to NV.

That I do agree with you on 100%.
LineNoise
join:2006-06-25
Downers Grove, IL
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Re: Hesse saved Sprint...

Nextel and CLEAR were both before Dan. Sprint was rolling WiMax out since late 2006 early 2007 and the wheels were already in motion when hetook the helm in late 2007. The network was built out, why wouldn't he "switch it on" and start trying to make some money back from it?

Nextel. NO ONE made ANY good decisions with Nextel after the Sprint Buyout. You can't blame him for that. CEOs destroyed nextel for 3 years before Dan even came on.

Sprint's network is a cluster and there's no other description of it until network vision is 100% completed. At least he's moving everything in the right direction. You can't change 3 networks overnight.
LineNoise

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Re: Hesse was a joke with AT&T, Sprint is more of the same

They went microwave backhaul. Their goal was to get away from the ILECs. Well that and he was suing them for unfair pricing.

nightdesigns
Gone missing, back soon
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join:2002-05-31
AZ

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Re: Hesse saved Sprint...

The unlimited data guarantee is for as long as you have that plan. They hold the right to modify or cancel at any time. Also, if you have any type of discount on your account, it only applies to the data portion (%off $30 data only). Right now it applies to the primary line service. Previously it was on your total account. I am not switching to the unlimited plan.
tmc8080
join:2004-04-24
Brooklyn, NY

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If you want to look at the silver linings, fine.. let's look at the rest. When Sprint burns through ALL of Softbank's money and has little uptake in market share from AT&T and Sprint, where does that leave Sprint? Looking for another merger, cash infusion, or partner... around 2018, when LTE will have to upgrade even further when the stakes go up for upgrading not just cell equipment, but backhaul FTTT (fiber to the tower) connections too.