Is Sprint Finally Turning Its Business Around?

"Assuming it can execute on its current plans, the worst is behind it," says Yankee Group analyst Carl Howe.

Sprint is winning back consumers the old-fashioned way: with hard-nosed cost management, good customer service, and simpler and cheaper services, says Howe, despite a tough period since about 2005 when the Nextel deal and then operational issues caused huge customer defections.

Sprint Nextel’s annualized customer churn rate in the first quarter of 2008 was 38.2 percent, one of the highest in the wireless industry, and a disproportionate share of those losses came from the Nextel portion of the customer base.

In the first quarter of 2008, in fact,  Sprint posted a $29.7 billion write-down of the $36 billion it paid for Nextel. It isn't clear what might have happened had Sprint not purchased Nextel, but it seems clear now that it was a mistake.

But Sprint has been clawing its way out of a hole for the past few years. Annual churn is down to about 33 percent, which is higher than Sprint probably wishes it were, but is a vast improvement.

Based on our North America Mobile Carrier Monitor, annualized customer churn at Sprint has fallen to just over 33 percent.

And though some might view the segment as unappetizing, Sprint has focused much of its marketing efforts on prepaid plans, the fastest growing segment of the mobile phone market.

Sprint has improved its customer satisfaction significantly since 2008 as well. Howe says the average satisfaction of Sprint customers is 7.3, just slightly higher than the industry average of 7.2, and higher than AT&T according to the May 2010 American Customer Satisfaction Index.

While not yet profitable again, Sprint has been slowly and steadily improving its financial performance.

And while some might scoff at the model, Sprint also is restructuring its business as wireless providers in some other markets (India and Europe) also have done, focusing on marketing and outsourcing technical elements of the business.

Basically, Sprint is trying to externalize all functions non-core to service differentiation, customer acquisition and retention. It has spun off network operations management, though not ownership, to Ericsson AB.

That agreement moved 6,000 Sprint employees to Ericsson, while reducing Sprint’s operational expense.

Spirnt also is sharing mobile infrastructure. In 2008, Sprint sold off more than 3,000 of its mobile towers to TowerCo and agreed to lease these towers back for its operations. By leasing instead of owning the towers, Sprint was able to free up capital.

The operator also has roaming agreements with Verizon, giving Sprint the flexibility to exchange operational cost for coverage when it doesn’t feel capital expenditures for coverage are warranted.

While Verizon and AT&T are swapping maps and million-dollar advertising budgets fighting to capture postpaid customers, Sprint has no fewer than four brands focusing on prepaid subscribers: Assurance for government-subsidized plans, Common Cents for Walmart shoppers, Boost for voice-focused consumers, and Virgin Mobile for data-oriented young consumers.

With the postpaid wireless market saturated and prepaid plans now accounting for the majority of growth in wireless, Sprint is focused on serving customers that the other carriers aren’t.

Sprint also was first out of the gate with a fourth-generation network, though some might now say it faces a switch of air interface again from WiMAX to Long Term Evolution.

It is not completely clear whether consumers will see WiMAX, Wi-Fi features Sprint is emphasizing and its approach to retail pricing as the differentiators Sprint hopes they will be, but there is no question Sprint is trying.

Any consumer considering a higher-end smartphone purchase these days probably will find Sprint's approach a lot easier to understand, as users now must decide how many voice minutes they want, how many text messages they need, whether they want or need multimedia messaging service, which data plan is best, and so forth. It simply is more complicated to buy a device and service today, than it used to be.
Sprint is trying pretty hard to simplify all of that.

Yankee Group believes that it will rebound this year more strongly than its competitors might think, says Howe.

Consumption of Long-Form Video Grows Faster than Short-Form Content

It isn't yet clear whether long-form video or short-form video poses the bigger demand on mobile and fixed access networks. But both are increasing.

The number of US online video viewers has risen steadily for the past few years and is expected to continue climbing in moderate increments through 2014, according to eMarketer, which suggests that growth will slow from between eight percent and nine percent a year from 2010 through 2012 to about 5.2 percent in 2014, when 77 percent of US Internet users will be watching online video content at least monthly.

Growth in online video viewership was increasing more quickly between 2008 and 2009, by 11.3 percent.

But streaming and downloading of full-length movies increased much more dramatically. According to Ipsos OTX, the percentage of Web users who watched long-form online video more than doubled between September 2008 and Oct 2009.

Such rapid increases in downloading and streaming mean full-length movie—and, by likely extension, TV—content is on a faster growth track than online video viewing as a whole, eMarketer says.

One factor behind the turn toward long-form content is the success of Hulu, which The Nielsen Company ranked second to YouTube in overall video streams viewed in April 2010. But Internet-connected devices in use also will play a part.

In-Stat expects U.S. shipments of Web-enabled devices that support TV applications will increase from 14.6 million this year to 83.4 million by 2014.

The demographics of online video viewing also help to explain why Internet users have gone beyond snack-size clips to adopt full-length TV and movie viewing on the Web. The highest penetration of online video viewing is among users 18 to 24, with 25- to 34-year-olds and teens not far behind. By the middle of this decade, those age groups will be at saturation points of above 90 percent penetration for video consumption.

Not only do these demographics watch online video in massive numbers, but they are also the most receptive to TV content online. Retrevo found that 29 percent of under-25s get all or most of their TV online, compared with eight percent of the video viewing population as a whole.

“If the first iteration of online video was about silly pet tricks on YouTube, the next wave will be about professionally produced full-length content such as TV shows, movies and live sports,” says Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst.

Some Like Integrated Updates, Feeds and Messages; Some Don't

Apple is apparently "unimpressed" with the way that other mobile phones have integrated social networks into one feed, and prefers to keep its streams uncrossed.

HTC's FriendStream, MotoBlur from Motorola and Sony Ericsson's TimeScape have proven to be popular in the mobile phone market, combining Twitter, Facebook and other social networking into one place.

However, Phil Schiller, Apple SVP says Apple will not be looking to do something similar, except to unify email boxes.

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Hosted IP Telephony Surpasses Single-Line Revenue Among Business Users

Hosted IP Centrex finally has surpassed broadband IP Telephony (single lines) as the leading revenue-generating, carrier-based business VoIP solution. That's a significant shift, and long in coming, as up to this point carriers actually have made more money selling single voice lines to business users than they have hosted PBX or hosted Centrex.


IP telephony use by business customers also will double the 2009 numbers in just three years, says In-Stat, reaching 79 percent penetration by 2013.

Today about 33 percent of companies use IP telephony. And despite all the talk of new and enhanced features, cost savings will remain the adoption driver.

"VoIP adopters have a good understanding of the cost savings associated with VoIP, and have oriented their limited budgets to optimizing efficiency and savings by replacing legacy TDM voice solutions,” says David Lemelin, In-Stat analyst.

Broadband IP Telephony revenue will also double by 2013, In-Stat said, fueled by single user applications as well as mobile usage.

About 33 percent of businesses that have already deployed VoIP solutions report that recent economic conditions have caused them to slow additional deployment plans, compared to 30 percent reporting no change in plans.

Broadband IP Telephony revenues continue to grow and will more than double by 2013, compared to 2008. This growth will be fueled by single-user applications among increasingly distributed and mobile workforces.

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U.S. Small and Medium Businesses to Spend $32 Billion on Voice and Data in 2010

U.S. small and mid-sized businesses will be spending about $32 billion in 2010 on voice and data services, according to Analysys Mason.

Rural Wireless Carriers Get Ready for Fight

Rural cellular operators say they are prepared to lobby the Federal Communications Commission aggressively for mandatory data roaming, Steven Berry the CEO of the Rural Cellular Association says.

RCA members also will push for mobile broadband to be a bigger part of the National Broadband Plan and future Universal Service Fund funding, and will fight handset exclusivity.

Times of regulatory change always provoke such fights, and that is precisely where the industry finds itself these days.

Light Reading - 4G/LTE - Rural Wireless Carriers Ready for a Fight - Telecom News Analysis

Mobile Internet Gets Used As PC Internet Does, In One Respect

In the month of April, 32 percent of mobile daily page views occurred between 7 p.m. and midnight, with the highest volume occurring at 9:00 p.m., according to an analysis by Ground Truth. If you are familiar with uage patterns for how consumers use the PC-based Internet, the results are similar, as usage starts to rise after people get home and builds until 9 p.m. or so before declining.

Ground Truth’s April census of 4.24 million Americans show that from 4 a.m. onwards, mobile Internet usage, as measured in page view consumption, climbs steadily throughout the day, with usage intensifying after 6 p.m. and peaking at 9  p.m., when 7.2 percent of all page views occurred.

Throughout the workday (9 a.m. until 5 p.m.), an average of 54 percent of Mobile Internet users browse content, with workday usage heaviest around 4 p.m.

“This data proves that mobile is, indeed, an ‘always-on’ medium,” says Evan Neufeld, Ground Truth VP. “On an average day, more than half of all Mobile Internet users are accessing the mobile Internet from the moment they wake up until they put their phone down on their bedside tables."

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