Is Sprint Recovering? It Appears So, But Slowly

Several years ago growth among the top three wireless networks looked very similar, strong. Then something happened at Sprint. They started softening. Bill Esrey was the CEO when the company was at the end of its strong run. The next CEO Gary Forsee tried to help the company by merging with Nextel, partnering with the cable television companies like Comcast and Time Warner, and several other changes. However instead of wild success for these big moves, the company continued to crumble.

Sprint is the number three wireless player in the United States, but they are strictly wireless. They are not a baby bell and do not offer a variety of other local phone services or Internet or television. Perhaps that has something to do with Sprints weakness. However listening to Verizon and AT&T their wireless operations are not tied to their wire line side. So why was Sprint having so much trouble?

They eventually brought in Dan Hesse as CEO. He successfully ran AT&T Wireless years ago, then spent a few years running a company called Terabeam and then he was hired to run Embarq, which was the local phone company Sprint spun off when it acquired Nextel.

Confused yet? There was a lot of movement during those years. Dan Hesse came to Sprint and spent several months trying to get his arms around the industry, the company, the challenges and the opportunities. He started making some serious moves. It looked as though the company was on the right path to recover.

Then the economy tanked. That threw Sprints recovery plans down the drain where they have been spinning over the last several years. What is the problem at Sprint? Will it ever recover?

Funny thing, we may be seeing the beginnings of the recovery at Sprint. No the results are not showing up as positive yet, however the bad results we have seen over the last several years are showing up as slower and weaker.

Sprint has been losing customers over the last several years. Bigger competitors like AT&T and Verizon have been the winners. Sprint has tried to reinvent itself by focusing on other areas like prepaid and helping other industries like automotive where they work with Ford putting the Internet on the dashboard.

We have expected to see some kind of recovery at the company over the last several years. They play a major role in the success of Clearwire. They were the first with the new Palm devices. They have all the great RIM Blackberry devices. They have an assortment of great phones and network services. Sprint was first with a camera on the phone and music too. Somehow they fell off the success track. And it is taking them way too long to recover, but it may look like they are starting.

I don't think based on past performance we can expect a rapid recovery. However the company does seem to be making progress.

I have tested Sprint phones to AT&T and Verizon and a number of others. The quality and reliability is there, as it has always been. That is not the problem. The innovation is there. That is not the problem. Even the customer service complaints are much better.

Generally speaking customers are happy at Sprint. The customers they lost may not have been happy, however Sprint still has tens of millions of customers. Remember when we say happy customers, the entire industry does not have really happy customers. People complain about wireless all day long. However Sprint customers at this point are not that different than AT&T or Verizon.

It is still losing customers, but according to this quarter the numbers are much fewer than in the past. They are slowing the loss. That is the good part.

Now if they can continue that momentum. If they can turn the corner... if they can start growing again, perhaps we can watch Sprint actually start to rebuild itself. Maybe investors will start to smile on the company once again.

Just sit back and watch, but don't hold your breath because from what we have seen it will take a while. However for now, at least they seem to be heading in the right direction after all these years.