Charter sprints from rinky-dink Sprint hints US cable monster Charter Communications says it has no interest in acquiring mobile carrier Sprint – at least for the time being. This after industry rumors suggested Charter was mulling making a bid for Sprint that would give the cableco an in‑house mobile provider. Charter is otherwise poised to launch a cellphone service …
Sprint:
- Counted extremely restrictive roaming agreements and inoperative towers when claiming the best coverage.
- Used long contracts and arbitration to lock in payments from customers stuck with defective towers and Sprint phones.
- Sold new "4G" WiMax phones on 2 year contracts even as they were abandoning WiMax.
- Sold their towers for a quick buck then leased them back.
- Made wild claims about how amazing an acquisition would be.
- Was purchased by SoftBank and continued to suck.
- Periodically terrorized T-Mobile customers with threats of a purchase.
- More wild claims about self-importance and the possibility of new amazing mergers, as if the SoftBank thing never happened.
I've been a T-Mob customer for over a decade now. I was also a Sprint customer for the exact length of the contract, then I went to AT&T instead. (It says how bad Sprint is that AT&T is better...) I would have attached the Sprint number to T-Mob, but I prefer to have two different providers just in case. If Sprint had acquired T-Mob, my T-Mob phone would now be AT&T or Verizon. (Again, that shows how bad Sprint is, that Verizon is better...)
I don't use AT&T and T-Mob because I like them. I don't. They are, however, measurably better behaved than Sprint or Verizon. As those who have had occasion to complain about T-Mob and (especially!) AT&T know, the fact that those two are better-behaved says all that needs to be said about Sprint and Verizon.
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