So a couple weeks back, an anonymous troll in Canada took issue with my railing on Sprint for its utter, dismal failure as of late, saying that he “Never even knew there was SO much deception on the internet.”
Well, I hate to burst his innocent little bubble, but there’s PLENTY of deception on the internet. You just won’t find it here.
Proof? Sprint just gave up on the Nextel merger, and wrote down the Nextel merger and posted a loss of $29.5 billion.
In response, [CEO Dan] Hesse said Sprint is taking steps to bolster its financial flexibility, by saying it won’t declare any dividends in the forseeable future and letting its $6 billion stock buyback plan expire. But the business is in such disarray that he’s taking his time to consider what needs to be done. “Internally, we have rolled out a unified company culture focused on accountability and on providing a superior customer experience,” he said Thursday. “We plan to share some of our initiatives for improving the customer experience and operations next quarter.” But, he cautions, “Strategic assessments and changes may take longer to complete.”
The problem with this “taking longer” is that Sprint has been in what it claims to be turnaround mode for years now. There’s a limit, and then you hit bottom. At this point, I don’t believe there’s ANY way for Sprint to get out of its mess other than to be bought out or liquidated. It’s just taken too long, an frankly, I don’t know of anyone in the know – customer, investor, or tech guru – who has real confidence in Sprint.
Anyway, I think this is vindication for me. Though it is sad to see a company I admired a while back to be in such a sad state.