Sprint Announces Layoffs, Number of Affected Employees Unknown

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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In an attempt to cut costs, Sprint is facing another big round of layoffs within the company it was announced this week. The exact number of job losses has not been announced yet, but Sprint expected the cost of the job cuts to be in the $160 Million range for severance packages and maintenance.

This planned reduction is expected to be largely completed by October 31, 2014 and will include certain management and non-management positions.
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I just had this discussion with my coworkers. Sprint could very easily turn things around and make far more money if they would only make a few changes. How ever this is just a step in the wrong direction and further proof in my opinion that people might as well dump them and go to one of the other 3.

They are a great example of why there will only ever be a few choices for cell phone service. Sprint had a great coverage area, especially after they bought out Nextel. However instead of using that to provide better service, they just used that purchase to gain new customers. They then started shutting down towers in what previously would have been either service area making their coverage area smaller.

While doing this they have been trying to find cheaper and cheaper ways to route calls to the point now that they actually route calls through other people's networks (call sprint phones in some areas will have you use at&t long distance trunks instead of sprint) instead of using their own. In doing this least cost routing they cause more and more of their calls to and from their network to fail. Instead of fixing the issues they just blame it on the other side and hope that the customer will finally just give up complaining about the problem.

If they would actually provide good service to people they could keep the customers they have, while getting new ones and not have an issue. But when your service sucks and you keep finding ways to cut cost to get every cent of profit per quarter you can, customers are going to not want to stick around and that possible profit will keep dropping.
 
So they have enough money to buy t-mobile, but not enough money to pay their own employees?
 
I never like to hear about more people losing their jobs, but Sprint is such a failure. I bought into their lame ass WiMax 4G and was disappointed , bought into their 4G LTE and was even more disappointed, bought into their POS Airwave and was even more MORE disappointed. Switching to T-Mobile was one of the best decisions i've made in 2014, mark my words of disappointment, Sprint will not last.
 
sir-gold said:
OK then, Softbank has enough money to buy t-mobile, but not enough to pay their Sprint employees?
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Softbank might feel that buying a profitable T-Mobile to create a combined carrier almost the same size as the two main rivals in the USA (AT&T and Verizon) might be a more useful way to spend money than throwing more money at a small struggling carrier that is losing to all three of its competitors :cool:
 
How Sprint still doesn't allow BYOD is beyond me. There isn't that much band overlap between them and Verizon, but just the PCS alone could help them while costing them nothing.

As is Sprint phones have a terrible to non-existent resale value and you're forced to buy one if you want to switch over. Getting rid of that wouldn't fix their network woes (only a few years high CAPEX with good planning and management will do that), but it would lower barriers to entry which can only be a good thing for a company in as much trouble as they are currently.
 
Surprised Sprint is still in business considering how bad their service and reception are. Just a matter of time before Sprint and HTC bite the dust.
 
Well, first 3 years I had Sprint they were horrid.
Endless streams of dropped calls, texts that never could send or receive and data that cut out 2/3 of the day.
The next 6 months the towers were finally upgraded and I had amazing service.
Last month towers started going down and I lost my data, my calls started dropping and I started having problems with sending and receiving texts again.
After 3 2+ hour calls to support where I got endleibounced around then being told there was no problem it was just me.
I sent a nice email (really, no sarcasm) to support thanking them for their time, telling them my first day free I was going to Verizon .
I had to BLOCK SPRINT on my phone but the f#cking support calls asking me what they could do but refused to credit my account or send someone out to fix the towers. My phone checked out ok at the store, no replacement.
So I'm on Verizon now.
All my texts are going through, no dropped calls, and data is there no matter where I go.
Sad thing is, I'm paying the same amount now but it covers my phone and a tablet.
 
Buying tmobile will only make their problems worse. Sprint is the bottom carrier, I use them because I can get it cheapest. Calls drop, their airave has weird issues. Data can be very slow, even on LTE. That said more or less I can get a signal everywhere its just not a high quality one. Oh and text messages will just show up really late.

Because of this they have to offer lower prices and unlimited data. Because of that they attract the worst users and the endless feedback loop of hell continues.

Now that said I don't know how people out there claim that Verizon is similar priced to sprint. It has never worked out that way for me or anyone I know. Verizon is the luckiest carrier, they get the best customers who don't mind paying more and getting less. Those customers just will do anything for the "network"

The solution for sprint is simple. EXPAND the damn network. Get the damn capacity up. When word gets around that you actually have good speeds you wont even need to advertise and you can close down your marketing department. Its the same old argument for a decade strait and sprint never gets it. How dense can a company be?
 
I just left Sprint two weeks ago. From the beginning I had dropped calls, received text messages the next day, and horrible data speeds. I just made the switch the T-Mobile and all is well. Sprint would simply pass the buck and tell the customer that "you should take your phone into a Sprint store to have it checked out". I cannot believe that they are still in business with service like that. The layoffs aren't a surprise; I mean how many people do you need to say take your phone to a Sprint store lol?
 
Sprint has been working fine for me in the Northeast part of the country, going on seven years now. I really can't complain about the service, I almost never drop calls and I manage to drive from Maine to Central PA with my kid watching Netflix in the back of the car the whole time with almost zero drops. I usually spend at least 30 minutes a day on phone calls and I average about 5GB of data a month.

Though I will say I would drop this in a heartbeat if I ran into anything close to the problems others are describing. When I initially got Sprint service in ~2007, they had much better coverage in Maine than anyone except Verizon. That has been holding pretty true for me over the years. So when you aren't getting service in your area, it might be because they blanketed towns in Maine with <10,000 residents :p
 
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